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Not to be Forgotten

Ramps from the Forest

• by Laura, July 14, 2008

This spring, a friend brought me a bunch of ramps she’d gathered in the woods near her house in upstate New York.  She handed them to me in a plastic bag standing on the walk in front of my house.

Now, it’s not too often someone hands you a bag of some wild food she personally collected from the forest floor. Naturally, the gesture thrilled me.  The oniony smell was intoxicating, and the green leaves were so smooth and gorgeous with their red stems that I immediately picked up the phone and called Nancy and told her to get right over to my house so she could collect some.  I had a strong feeling that she’d want to paint them.  I was right.

For those of you who may not know—ramps (allium tricoccum) are a special kind wild leek that is famous in the Appalachian mountains.  And, listen to me now, they are also a national treasure.

For on thing, they are the first edible greens of spring.  And for people who once lived or still live close to the land in Appalachia, ramps have long been a source of joy and hope each April, greeted with parties and feasts.

In recent years, chefs and foodie fashionistas have fallen in love with ramps.  Now you find cultivated ramps in upscale urban farmers markets and even some Whole Foods (so I hear).  Yes, another poverty food gone chic.

As I looked into my bag of ramps, I remembered this folklorist named Mary Hufford.  Mary spent a lot of time hanging out in West Virginia’s “Big Coal River Valley” back in the nineties documented the lives of the mountain people who, for generations, used the forest for gathering and hunting.  She described communities deeply connected to the seasons and one another.  Ramps as part of a larger world of quilting bees, the Baptist church—and, of course, the annual Ramps Supper in the “Ramp House” on Drew Creek. 

You can see her work on ramps here.  It’s just about one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen..

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/tending/essay4a.html

Not exactly the kind of stuff they cover on the Food Network, is it, now.

But back to the muddy ramps on my kitchen counter.  How to cook these things?  Of course I wanted to make them like they do in West Virginia.

I reached out to Rebecca Tolley-Stokes at Potlikker, who wrote me that ramps are eaten many ways--fried, plain, boiled, but very often with some sort of pork fat and eggs or potatoes, in a skillet on top of the stove. 

So when Nancy arrived at my house, we did just that.  First we fried up the bacon. Then we added some sliced potatoes and salt, then the parboiled chopped ramps, and then got everything a little soft.

To be honest, I wasn’t expecting much.  I figured it would taste just like any other kind of humble potatoes and greens dish. But the truth is that the ramp surprised me.  It’s a divine creature--complex, sweet, with just a little bite.  A cross between onion and garlic.  No wonder chefs love it. 

Shortly after my first taste of ramps, I tracked down my hero Mary Hufford, now the director of the folklore center at U. Penn.  It’s been ten years since she finished her study, so I wrote and asked if the folks in her mountains were still collecting ramps and having their ramps suppers.  Here’s what she wrote back. 

“I haven’t been to a ramp supper in a few years, but I think they are still holding them in southern West Virginia.  My understanding is that ramp patches are increasingly harder to get to, because they grow in the high hollows that are being blasted away through mountaintop removal mining--a violent and extremely wasteful way to generate energy and is devastating to the communities living near sites of extraction.  It is destroying a world class ecological treasure, the central Appalachian Mixed Mesophytic forest, and the habitat for ramps.  It’s an unacceptable price to pay for coal, no matter how “cleanly” the coal industry promises to burn it.

“In such a historical context, ramp suppers and ramp patches bear watching as indicators of national political health and well-being—spring tonic for the heart, tonic for the democratic communal well-being.”

A tonic for the heart….  A tonic for democracy.  Imagine….

Thanks Mary.

And thanks to my friend Joann for bringing me my first ever ramps.

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