Ramping Up: G-N Ramp Farm Is the Only One of Its Kind in U.S.

I have written about this dear and enterprising man before. Here's the latest version.

By CYNTHIA McCLOUD
For The State Journal

Glen Facemire Jr. is a ramp man like his dad.

The elder Facemire dug the ramps that supplied the annual ramp feed in Richwood. That was many years ago when the event attracted far fewer than the 1,000-plus attendees it draws now. It requires about a ton of ramps — Allium Tricoccum, a member of the onion and garlic family — more than just one person could dig.

He raised his children on ramps.

“We would go back in the mountains,” Facemire Jr. remembered. “We would fish, and we would dig ramps. We would take a bunch of half-gallon and quart jars and a big tub. We would build a fire, and my mother would sterilize the jars and wilt the ramps. She’d put about a spoonful of salt to a half-gallon jar, and she would lightly tighten the lids and put the jars onto boil for 1 1/2 hours. When they were finished, they were ready to come home and put them in the cellar.”

(He wouldn’t advise home-canning ramps now for fear of botulism.)

“It wasn’t ‘Oh boy! We’ve got a delicacy here,’ ” he said. “It was just food, something to eat, one of the first foods to come up in the spring. It was good food and good for you.”

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The farm’s website, www.rampfarm.com, sells mature ramps for eating and seed and ramp bulbs for planting.

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