The Rush for Ramps Is Threatening Millennia-Old Foodways

Photo caption: Ramps appear in early spring across the eastern United States. Karel Bock / Alamy. Article by Amanda Gokee. Atlas Obscura – June 9, 2021.

Native harvesters’ access to the wild plant is jeopardized by its trendiness.

Nova Kim is on the hunt: for morel, for fiddleheads, and, these days, for wild ramps.

On dirt roads, Kim and her partner of 41 years, Les Hook, prowl the Vermont woods. The Indigenous gatherers are 78 and 77, hailing from the Osage and Abenaki nations respectively. Kim can’t walk so well anymore, so she drives. Hook rides in the passenger seat of their sea-green Prius, the needle of the speedometer hovering around 5 mph. The windows are rolled down, and their eyes comb the quiet stretches beside dirt roads. […]

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