Note: In our Nov. 5 newsletter, we incorrectly identified the heritage and broad-breasted holiday turkeys we have available for order as coming from Niman Ranch. While they are Bill Niman’s product, they’re sold under his BN imprint. Our apologies for the mistake.
We’re old enough to remember the days when spending $100 at the grocery store netted you a “free” turkey at Thanksgiving. The main course was seen as an afterthought, a freebie, the meat so insignificant that loading up on Gerwurtz and canned sauces got you the meal’s centerpiece as a mere incentive.
Fortunately, times have and are changing. While conventionally raised birds are still nearly free, a growing number of consumers are re-embracing the bird as the true centerpiece of this holiday meal and are willing to pay real prices for a real treat.
Some 18 million turkeys are processed each year in the United States, the overwhelming majority of them doomed animals grown in crowded pens that necessitate the constant administration of antibiotics and have beaks and toes removed to keep them from harming themselves and others.
None of that happens on Bill and Nicolette Niman’s Bolinas ranch in nearby Marin County.
The innovative rancher who, it can be argued, normalized sustainable meat production in the U.S., Bill Niman’s meats are known for their quality and taste as well as for the humane manner in which they are raised. To see the land his animals live on is to fantasize that they might just simply die of happiness at the beauty of their environs. He and his wife Nicolette’s work with turkeys is actually extraordinary when contrasted with industrially-raised birds.
The broad breasted turkey mostly purveyed had a short and sorry life before coming to your plate, one devoid of bugs, sunshine, flight, and natural reproduction. The Nimans take a humane attitude to their White Holland, Narragansett, Standard Bronze, Spanish Black, and Bourbon Red heritage breeds. (Their White Turkeys have the same happy life but aren’t heritage.) The chicks are naturally produced, raised without antibiotics or clipping, and allowed a turkey’s full round of pleasure, from pecking about to roosting in trees. Heritage birds take longer to come to fullness so consume more feed — all of it GMO-free and mostly based on safflower and sunflower meal augmented by wheat — which makes them more expensive.
White Turkeys are kin to the broad breasted fellows from the conventional farm and so come to maturity more quickly. Niman’s Whites, however, live the same contented round as do their heritage brethern and aren’t forced to grow to the obscene proportions that cause conventional turkeys to suffer hip degradation, reproductive disorders, and limited mobility.
Heritage turkeys present more dark meat and have a gamier overall taste derived from the natural field environment that serves as their snack plate. Once harvested, conventional turkeys are typically infused with a saline solution to set the meat, additionally adding to the bird’s weight at sale and, of course, resulting in a saltier tasting bird. Heritage and natural birds are not; furthermore, Niman’s are never sold frozen.
We’re the sole purveyor of BN turkeys north of Santa Rosa and are taking holiday orders now. Your vegetables probably aren’t often produced from supermarket cans these days, and you might be drinking more Riesling than Gerwurtz. Why would your turkey be an insignificant afterthought?
Call 707.431.7433 or email us today to discover more or to place an order.