Festival Celebrates Ramps, An Appalachian Tradition

WHITETOP, Va. – The world might be moving ahead at breakneck pace, but that’s one reason so many people come back here every year: to get centered again on down-home food, old-time music and unhurried fun.

“Stuff like this is going to grow, not die out,” said Ian Snider, 26, of Todd, N.C., one of hundreds who attended the Whitetop Ramp Festival on Sunday despite the chilly wind blowing through the remote mountain community.

“People are drawn to an authentic experience. Our society as a whole – there’s not many things you can go and do that are authentic and real and have a long-standing tradition. That’s what people are interested in anymore.”

While the ramps – wild members of the onion family that come up early in the spring – take center stage in a contest that reportedly leaves participants stinking for days, a lot of people say they come for the music.

“That’s been a big family thing for us since we were kids – the music, and I think the bluegrass music, it’s America,” said Mike Taylor of Bristol, Tenn., who came with his wife and other family members. “It’s a piece of who we are and where we come from. It tells the stories of who we are.”

Taylor said he and his brothers meet every Tuesday night at their grandmother’s house to play the music they learned from their father and grandfather – and every year they come here for the ramp festival.

“When the people come out here on the dance floor, just dancing, that’s America. That’s what it’s all about, just community,” he said. “It is a time you see people of all ages, from the very old to the very young. ... It’s passing some of Americana on to the next generation.”

Jeff Brickey of Chilhowie said he’s seen a lot of interest among young people in bluegrass and old-time music.

“I’ve noticed [over] the years that you see more young teenagers at bluegrass festivals than any other people,” Brickey said as he watched from one of the warm seats along the barbecue pit. “They need to come out and learn a little bit more, because one day the older people’s going to die out and they’ll need somebody to sing.”

The ramp-eating contest, meanwhile, offers a $100 prize to the person who can eat the most ramps in three minutes. There are only a few rules but, as the announcer eloquently put it, “If you upchuck, you’re disqualified.”

This year’s winner, 27-year-old Eric Dayan of Konnarock, said after he won the contest that he felt like doing just that. But, he said, he was no longer broke.
Snider, raised in South Carolina, said festivals like this make even people who didn’t grow up here feel like they belong – not just with the music, but with the way of life in little mountain communities like Whitetop.

Both he and his wife, Kelly, who has visited her grandmother here since she was a child, say they’ll be doing this for a long time.

“I think it will keep going. I think there are enough [young] people playing and participating that it’ll keep going,” Kelly Snider said. “But some of the old-timers are going to hang on for a long time. My granny’s 89, and she’s out there dancing.”

| (276) 791-0701