CHARMCO, W.Va. (AP) - It’s not quite like Christmas. But come April every year, Bucky Dorsey’s local post office handles an awful lot of extra shipments - and a whole lot of stink.
Wafting between stacks of cardboard boxes is a garlicky, onion odor. The stench is all too familiar to those who grew up around ramps, a member of the lily family that’s sometimes known as a wild leek.
Dorsey is a resident and native of Charmco, a small town between Beckley and Lewisburg. He’s the one dropping off packages at the post office - and sending a piece of West Virginia all across the country. His ramp business has reached nearly all corners of the United States, with the exception of Hawaii. While the ramps may be popular at local restaurants, many of his customers seem to be those longing for home.
“You can definitely smell the ramps through the packaging,” Dorsey said.
But the post office hasn’t complained.
Ramps, which grow in the spring in Eastern Canada and the U.S., are the centerpiece of many West Virginia dinners and festivals in April and May, including Richwood’s Feast of the Ramson, which draws thousands of attendees. It will be held on Saturday.
Over the last several years, the pungent crop has gained popularity in gourmet restaurants across the country, leading some West Virginia diggers - like Dorsey - to cash in.
His seasonal business began “accidentally” 10 years ago. He posted about ramps on his blog and was barraged with questions.
Until then, he was unaware that ramps were not cultivated throughout the country. Growing up in Charmco, ramps were essentially a part of life.
“My first memories of ramps were when I was climbing the mountains in the Cold Knob area as a child with the men of the church digging bushels of ramps for the church’s spring ramp feast,” Dorsey said. “We would dig a few bushels of ramps and deliver them to other members of the church for cleaning.”
He has vague memories of ramps filling his family’s bathtub before taking them to the church to be prepared. Neither his mother nor father were fond of the stinky scent or flavor.
“They didn’t like to clean them, they didn’t like to smell them and they definitely didn’t like to eat them, but they helped out anyway,” he said. “They even attended the ramp dinner, even though the smell of ramps overpowered all of the other food.”
When the blog’s followers became interested in purchasing ramps from Dorsey by the pound, he couldn’t say no.
The volume of ramp sales is what led him to create a business, wildwestvirginiaramps.com. After a few years of sales, it wasn’t just a hobby anymore. He struggled to meet the demand.
“During peak season we typically do between 50 to 200 pounds per week,” Dorsey said. “It is hard to keep up sometimes.”
When he isn’t elbow deep in ramps, Dorsey works full-time for a large furniture manufacturer.
He enlists the help of loyal diggers to help keep up during the season, which only lasts four to six weeks depending on the weather.
“This time of year ramps are the only thing green on woods floor, so they are pretty easy to spot,” he said. “We all have our ’secret’ locations that we like to dig ramps.”
Finding the best way to ship the ramps and ensure they survived the trip, while keeping costs down, took a lot of trial and error.
“We package them in onion sacks and place them in USPS boxes,” Dorsey said. “They deliver in two days, so they arrive fresh as long as they aren’t laying in the 80-degree sun on someone’s porch all day.”
Many of his buyers are familiar with the ramp’s stinky habits, though.
“The majority of my customers are people who have had ramps before, and a large number of those people are former West Virginia residents,” Dorsey said.
One of his longest customers, Tonia Addison-Hall was introduced to ramps by her grandfather, Pete Carnell, who grew up digging and eating ramps in Marfrance, a town less than 10 miles from the Charmco Post Office.
Each year, Addison-Hall orders a box for her grandfather, who lives in Ohio, and another for herself in Montana.
“My grandfather always said ramps clean out your blood,” Addison-Hall said. “It’s the folklore I guess.”
Carnell, 86, remembers picking them by the bushel with his brothers as a kid.
“Everybody knew it was ramp season when we went to school,” he said. “It was a blessing, it really was - the taste of them and the idea that they came off of the earth and everybody got them and ordered them.”
Carnell joined the U.S. Air Force and left Marfrance in 1954. He moved to Cleveland at the end of his service.
There, he found a park where the ramps grew wild and would return to dig them each spring. A few years ago, he and Addison-Hall were caught digging them together and nearly received a ticket.
“The guy let us off with a warning,” she said, laughing.
Addison-Hall began ordering from Dorsey about five years ago when she found his website.
She’s found a few local restaurants in Montana which sell ramps but refer to them as “wild leeks.”
Many of her neighbors are still unaware of the stink vegetable. Though he lives in Ohio, Carnell relates.
“When I first got here and cooked them, people would complain because they didn’t know what they were,” Carnell said, laughing. “It would leave a smell.”
Dorsey credits his high volume of sales to high-end restaurants around the country which sell them.
“I think it really started in New York City, and there was a segment on ’The Chew’ that featured ramps,” he said. “It was after that my sales really picked up. A friend of mine and business owner in Richwood regularly ships out thousands of pounds of ramps to chefs in New York and Chicago.”
While his parents are supportive of the side business, they remain indifferent to the stinky onion.
“More for everyone else, right?” he said.
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Information from: The Charleston Gazette-Mail, http://wvgazettemail.com.
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