PROCTORVILLE — Onions may make you cry but no one was shedding tears over the ramps served at a fundraiser by the Proctorville VFW Saturday.

The ramps, a plant of the onion family, were the main dish featured in VFW Post 6878’s biggest moneymaker of the year.

Post Quartermaster Marlin Yelton said the post expected 200 people to come from as far away as Columbus and Detroit to feast on the dish.

Members of the post dug about 25 Walmart bags full of the plants from a top-secret location, Yelton said. One of the reasons the location is secret is because the plants cannot be planted, he said. The plants grow where they will and nowhere else.

“Some people like them,” he said. “The ramps come up overnight and they’re short-lived and then they’re gone.”

When it comes to the vegetable, people either like them or they don’t, he said. There’s not a lot of middle ground.

Two people who decidedly do like the plant are Jack and Lynette Robinson of Proctorville. The couple travels frequently to ramp festivals.

“My mom and dad used to dig them,” Lynette said.

Jack was a little resistant the first time he went to a ramp dinner, he admits.

“My first dinner I brought Subway,” he said. “I didn’t think I’d like them.”

Needless to say, he soon changed his mind.

The fundraiser is a tradition for the post. Yelton said the club has been hosting the dinner since the post was formed.

“This is supposedly one of the largest ramp dinners in the state of Ohio,” he said.