04/06/2026
🌿 A poem for ramp season. ⬇️
The Muddy Hills
Everyone wants the word sustainable
stitched across the label, the menu, the post
but few will kneel and tuck the roots back down,
few will pay for the Cherokee Cut
Respect for the land is easy to say.
Respect for the hands that know a colony
well enough to thin it, not strip it bare
that kind of talk is cheaper than it ought to be.
And so the margins shrink and the shortcuts grow
in the muddy hills where the prized things flourish,
where a careful harvest takes twice as long
and a careless one feeds the chain that nourishes
restaurants and markets and Monday menus
with the first green thing to break the frost
that small wild gift, that hard-won delicacy,
trimmed of the story of what it cost.
The full chain feels cold. Feels broken, somewhere
between the forest floor and the finished plate.
The grand prize arrives. The grower disappears.
The price was always paid, just never at the register.
So here's an ask from the brown thumbs
who know the temperature of the earth,
who read the seasons better than they read the news
lean in closer. Help us rewrite the worth.
Plant the roots.
Pay for the cut.
Know who grew it.
Know why it matters.
That's how the story stays alive.
That's how the colony comes back.
That's how a wild thing stays wild
long enough to feed the next spring.
🌿 Fresh ramps, Cherokee Cut, and root plate replanting — junxionfarm.com/shop
