First harvest
Every April it is ramps season, and every April there is ramps backlash. They are overhyped, one hears. Stop obsessing over them. Ramp dunk pieces always seem to be stated by non-natives, people who grew up on the coasts who don’t get the point. Even beside this, the point is missed.
One does not hype ramps because they are amazing, even though they are. One hypes ramps because they got here first. One looks at ramps and thinks of abundance, of the rest of the summer unfolding before us.
The way to engage with ramps is to make stuff with them, of course, but it is also to recognize their deeper role as the first harbingers of spring, something profoundly fleeting (growing season is normally only 2 weeks!), something that teaches us about what this whole thing is.
When you live in a place as cold as the midwest, growing seasons are short. Tomatoes are around for two months. Peppers are around for less. You get garlic for a couple of months, scapes for 3 weeks, berries for one month, good apples for a few weeks, paw paws for two weeks(!), fiddleheads for one week(!!), morels for maybe a month if you’re lucky.
Farmer’s markets change radically week to week. Varietals come in and out. Sometimes, not enough is made. I once rolled up early to see what was good at my favorite pepper farm, and they had 23 heaven-facing chiles for the whole season. My favorite paw paw farm sells a few plates every week for two weeks, maybe three if you’re lucky. She remembers your face week to week and denies you if she recognizes you. Nothing is guaranteed. I have seen some years with absolutely zero ginger, persimmon, or ground cherries.
Ramps speak to this by being fundamentally ephemeral. They cannot be farmed, only harvested in the wild, so their crops are variable and fleeting. For the plant that comes first, this is a feature, not a bug. They are a reminder of the ways in which we are generally ruining the planet. Overharvest them and they go away, taking a long time to return – if they do at all. We must take little, ensuring that they continue to provide enough. There are lessons within this.
If tatsoi came first, I guess we would praise tatsoi. But tatsoi is harvested in mid-June, ramps are harvested in mid-April, and the world keeps rolling around its host fireball, minding its own business like nothing else is happening. We absolutely must look upon ramps with reverence & wonder. They look back at winter and say: look, we made it.