Shop often enough at the embarrassment of riches that makes up the Bay Area’s farmers’ market scene and you can’t help but start to get a sense of the seasons: fava beans and sugar snap peas in the spring, tomatoes in the late summer, hachiya persimmons for a few glorious weeks in the fall.
But if you’re anything like me (assuming you eat meat), you probably think of beef as a year-round indulgence — one that’s restricted more by your cholesterol level or your bank account than by what month it happens to be.
Not so, says Bill Niman, whose Bolinas-based company, BN Ranch, rolled out this year’s first shipments of one-hundred-percent grass-fed, seasonally-slaughtered beef earlier this month. It’s a project Niman says he’s been working on for about a decade, but many of the Bay Area’s eco-conscious, flavor-savvy diners are just now starting to wrap their heads around the concept.