Ramps: They’re Stinkin’ Good

WHITETOP, Va. – It can leave you with a lingering stench – part skunk, part onion – and a gnawing desire for more.

The annual ramp festival in Whitetop on Sunday is among dozens of events in the Appalachian region celebrating the native, wild leeks that once meant much-needed nutrition but have found their way into fine restaurants nationwide.

“Chefs are always looking for a new flavor, a new taste, and the lowly ramp that used to be just kind of for country people … is becoming so popular now that the ramp [is being] served in some of your more finer dining places, from Seattle to New York and Los Angeles and San Francisco,” said Glen Facemire, whose book on ramps, “Having Your Ramps and Eating them Too,” was published in February.

Ramps are known for their unique, mellow flavor, their supposed healing properties and their precocious odor, which festival organizers said can last as long as three weeks for those who eat them in large quantities.

“You can start stinking for a couple days for a dollar, if you don’t share them with anyone … you’re going to need the whole dollar’s worth to stink for a couple days,” said Lisa Blevins, an EMT for the Mount Rogers Volunteer Fire Department and Rescue Squad, which organizes the festival as a fundraiser.

“If you’re really mad at your spouse, I’d recommend you eat 50 or better,” Blevins said, adding that it will cost about $5 for a real good odor.

Ramps will be for sale by the dozen Sunday, she said. Also available will be a barbecue chicken dinner with fried potatoes and ramps. A centerpiece of the festival is the annual ramp-eating contest, which has been taking place since at least the 1970s.

“When I was in the ninth grade at school, one of the guys in my class won the ramp-eating contest, he ate 57 that year,” Blevins said. “Then Monday morning he came to school and we couldn’t sit in the classroom with him. They sent him home. It’s hard to believe, but it does happen.”

The winner in the adult division of the contest, with a $100 prize, starts with 100 ramps, but there have been times when eating 100 wasn’t enough to win; another prize is offered to the child who can eat the most ramps.

Blevins said members of the fire department and rescue squad are digging ramps every evening this week in preparation for the festival and will likely wind up with 20 to 30 trash bags full of the plants, which grow wild in the woods at high elevations.

In addition to ramps themselves, which Blevins said are “an awesome food,” the rain-or-shine festival will include bluegrass music and crafts. It runs from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Among the most famous of the ramp festivals is the one in Richwood, W.Va., the self-proclaimed “Ramp Capital of the World.” The Richwood Chamber of Commerce also keeps track of the festivals scheduled throughout the mountain region.

“People love them so much because they’re so different,” said Vikkie Mayse, executive director of the Richwood chamber.

“It’s really interesting because these people really do come a long way for this food. I couldn’t believe it,” Mayse said. “Then I smelled them, and I really couldn’t believe it.”

Facemire said the very popularity of the wild-growing vegetable could be its ultimate downfall – unless people start cultivating them for personal consumption.

“In a lot of places they’re being dug out to the point where they can’t really harvest them and eat them like we do around here … if people plant their own little ramp patch and have their ramps, then they can eat them.”

But in the mountains, where ramps grow plentifully and have traditionally been a source of food in the springtime, Facemire said, there are still plenty for food and festivals.

“It’s good to eat, and people really enjoy cooking it in different ways, whether they’re frying it up with some potatoes and eggs or they’re just getting them early in the spring of the year and sautéing them up in butter and maybe adding some mushrooms,” Facemire said. “People are not only selling them, they’re putting them in their freezer for winter and canning them, drying them, pickling them, making various products out of them, ramp salt, ramp seasonings, they’ll have ramp mustard, ramp candy, ramp cornbread, just about anything you can imagine using ramps, ramps is used in it.”

As for the down side of this “wonder plant,” Facemire acknowledges its odiferous nature. But, he said, “Ramps don’t stink; they just smell that way.”

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