NANTAHALA NATIONAL FOREST, N.C. -- Beginning next year, civic groups that pick wild ramps for spring festivals will have to abide by new U.S. Forest Service rules.
The reason: The government worries that big digs of the wild leek are straining natural populations. So new rules will go into effect, telling groups where and how to pick the plants and forcing them to pay 50 cents a pound for what they take.
A Forest Service researcher eager to help preserve the festivals is accompanying the civic groups on this year's digs to get a better handle on the true toll from their hauls.
"If we don't figure out a way to manage them, they'll be gone," researcher Jim Chamberlain said. "If there are no more ramps, there will be no more ramp festivals."
Mountain people in North Carolina still hike miles to pick enough ramps -- which taste like a cross between garlic and scallions -- for special suppers during the four weeks or so that the plants show themselves each spring.
Volunteer firehouses, rescue squads and civic groups have long staged annual ramp festivals to raise money for community causes.
Organizers of the biggest festivals collectively pick more than 3,000 pounds of ramps each year, Chamberlain estimates. It takes 40 to 80 plants to make a pound.
But demand for ramps is expanding far from the mountains, propelled by a craze for regional and seasonal food.
Last week, the Ruritans from Cosby, Tenn., walked a Forest Service trail for 40 minutes before finding ramps to dig.
Five Ruritans and three younger helpers worked Thursday for nearly three hours.
"They're not as big as I thought they'd be this time of the year, said Carroll Williamson, 68, who tasted his first ramp 50 years ago.
The men loaded 17 wooden vegetable crates on carts and started the slow walk back to their trucks near a Forest Service gate.
Chamberlain used a hand-held fish scale to weigh each crate. "Ten pounds, 10 ounces," he recited after lifting one crate.
He also packed up samples. Back in a lab at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, he will measure the length and width of each plant, down to the diameter of each stem.
Preliminary results tell him that the size of the plants the Ruritans and larger groups are picking may be falling year after year.
Still, the Ruritans had about 265 pounds of ramps to haul home. It was less than the 300 or more pounds they collected last year, but enough to supply their festival.
As the diggers loaded their crates, Chamberlain passed out the Forest Service policy expected to go into effect next year. Groups will be allowed to take only half the plants in every square foot of a ramp patch.
