On Alliums
wild ramps, garlic, and rootedness
Here in our little cold corner of Vermont, we are finally witnessing spring. The sap buckets are cleaned and put away; coltsfoot is spreading its dandelion-like blossoms across boggy areas; our muddy, rutted road was graded with fresh gravel today; daffodils and crocuses are beginning to come up; and our family harvested our first ramps of the season last week. Tasting the sharp, green, oniony flavor of these wild edibles is always a hallmark of spring for us, and one that anchors our existence in this place, in this climate and season.
Ramps, or wild leeks, are often found blanketing hardwood forest floors in early spring, and are a welcome and delicious wild food before anything else is growing. In a way, alliums bookend our growing season here; ramps are the first thing that we harvest and enjoy, while garlic is the last crop we plant, just as the earth is readying itself for its winter sleep.
When we left our last rental, where we had attempted to start a homestead on 600 acres of cooperatively-owned land, our crop of garlic was sleeping in the earth beneath a blanket of straw in a neighbor’s garden. It was the second-to-last day of October, pouring rain, and we didn’t know exactly when we would be back from the new life we were choosing—full-time travel for an unforeseeable period. But the garlic lay there quietly, a reason to return.
Planting garlic in this climate always feels like a tiny leap of faith. You bury the cloves in holes as the rest of the earth is going to sleep. Most of the leaves have fallen from the trees, the green of the grass is fading, and you invariably have chosen the coldest day of the week to push cloves into the earth with red, numb fingers. You cover them with manure-enriched soil, then with straw or shredded leaves, and you leave them there to rest throughout the long, snowy winter. It will be a good seven months before you witness any sign of life in that garden bed, and those first shoots of green will feel like a small miracle when they appear.
We did return to our bed of garlic, and we visited it as it began to shoot greenery up towards the sky in June. We drank in the lush greenness of Vermont summer, and at the end of July, my then-6-year-old and I pulled our garlic harvest, marveling at its beauty and size.
This crop had given back so much to us, even though we had abandoned it for warmer climes. We savored it for a while and then gave much of it away to friends and family, not having a place to store it.
That fall, we flew overseas to Europe without leaving any dormant alliums behind. The future was too uncertain, and we didn’t know when we would be back. Then, 6 months later, there we were in Vermont again in a short-term rental, in my hometown no less, on an intense search to end our rootlessness and find property to purchase. In between looking at houses and land, we wandered down familiar streets and up much beloved hiking trails, and we remembered our favorite places to gather ramps. We basked in the familiar return of the first greenness of spring, filling our baskets and bellies with the sharp flavor. Our children ate them raw, hot and unadorned, and we all enjoyed them mellowed out by potato and cream in soup.
Later that summer, we bought our land, a property that only a few miles away from the house we had left on that rainy October day nearly two years earlier. In the fall we planted a new crop of garlic in our old neighbor’s garden. After traveling and being rootless for so long, it definitely felt like an act of faith that spoke to our commitment to be here to harvest it the following year. We chose a frigid day in early November, with snow flurries whipping through our hair and the requisite numb fingers. Each clove was like a tiny root that we were putting into the earth, trusting that it might be dormant for some time but would eventually bear fruit.
When we moved into our cabin in the spring, we returned to our favorite ramp places (one of which we fondly call Ramp Town); in addition to harvesting them to enjoy fresh and to make into ramp butter and pesto, we dug up bulbs to transplant among the trees behind our cabin. Our largely hardwood forest, with its high water table, is a perfect place for ramps to thrive, and we can only assume that the heavy logging done here 20 years ago must have destroyed this delicate spring plant. Now we are trying to reverse the damage, to bring this valuable spring food back into our woods, both for us and for the wildlife that seek it out when little else is growing.
We have continued to plant garlic in our friend’s garden while we clear and prepare our own land for planting. The cycle of it is grounding, a seasonal ritual that reminds us why we are here, and what we are trying to do. On land that has no infrastructure, life can feel a bit haphazard and temporary, as we continually look forward to a larger house, space to spread out, running water. Planting garlic has made us feel more rooted in this liminal space we are inhabiting.
Although they are both alliums, ramps and garlic might seem wildly different. Ramps are a spring ephemeral, the first bright green growing thing that we spot amidst the grey and browns left behind by the recently melted snow; yet bruised and yellowing as soon as the more permanent green of the forest springs up around them. Once harvested, ramps keep only a week or so, unless you preserve them in salt or pesto or butter.
Garlic, on the other hand, seems to just keep on giving - in early summer we harvest the curly, bright green scapes, which start to run out just as the first bulbs are ready to be pulled and enjoyed as fresh green garlic. Once harvested and cured in late summer, the bulbs keep all winter. Yet both of these alliums have come to symbolize rootedness for me, because of the way that they anchor the seasons and cycles of the year, and because planting them does not yield immediate results. This is the third spring that we have begun to transplant wild ramps from other, abundant areas, to our own land. And just last week we spied new little ramp leaves pushing themselves determinedly up through the leaf litter behind the cabin. Yet it will take a full 7 years for any of the new transplanted ramps to produce seed, which means that we won’t harvest any until 2031. So we wait and watch each spring, settling into the knowledge that we will be here then. May it be so.
That mountain looks so much like our family’s cabin here in the North Georgia mountains. We also enjoy wild ramps. Down here they only grow typically above 3,000ft!
I wish you the best of good health, faith, and prosperity on your new property!