I'd never heard of ramps until I started working at Trillium. Though some may think of them as haute cuisine -- ramps often appear on the menus of tonier restaurants and on cooking shows of celebrity chefs -- their culinary roots are quite humble. Which is what you would expect, as country people scoured their local woods and fields for something green to carry them through the lean early spring.
When Michael and Anja started farming here, ramps grew naturally in a few spots in the woods. They've since planted several more patches, with an eye toward developing them for sale as a specialty crop. We're waiting for them to become established so they can be harvested sustainably. I don't know if we'll harvest any this year, but I hope so. I'd like to try them.
Or I could just plant my own. As an experiment, Michael bought a box of ramp starts from a farm in West Virginia. We've been planting them in four-inch pots to sell along with our other vegetable plants. It's been a bit of a trick learning how to grow them. We planted the first batch too soon, and now they're past their prime, so we'll plant those in the woods. But the next couple of rounds are looking pretty good. Look for them at the market.
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