The Wild Table - Part Three
THE WILD TABLE - PART THREE
For the third chapter of The Wild Table, I headed about an hour outside of Buffalo to visit my friend Johanna Dominguez. Johanna owns Put a Plant On It and is pretty much known around town as Buffalo’s “plant queen.” Plants have always been part of her life. Over the generations, he family has farmed everything from pineapples to cacao, and she grew up moving through six different countries before settling in the U.S. at fifteen. That kind of upbringing gave her a wide view of the natural world, and now that she’s rooted in Buffalo, her love of plants has only grown.
Johanna’s land is full of wild patches of ramps, and that’s what we went looking for. We spent the morning wandering through the woods, digging carefully around the bulbs and gathering just enough for a good meal. You could smell them before you saw them — sharp and fragrant, the kind of scent that instantly tells you why people get so excited about their short season. Watching Johanna work was its own lesson. She’s surrounded by plants every day at her shop, and out here she knew precisely where the ramps liked to grow and how to harvest them without disturbing the patches.
One last note: ramps, like many wild foods, need to be foraged carefully. Overharvesting can wipe out patches that take years to grow back. We made sure only to take what we needed and left plenty behind for the land to keep thriving. If you’re new to foraging, go with someone who knows what they’re doing, and always harvest with respect for the plants and the place they grow.