How are Your Tomatoes

When Susan Jacobs considers what to make for dinner, she simply checks the crops outside her house.

A few nights ago, her backyard garden was teeming with lettuce, beans and herbs. Her hens just laid a few fresh eggs. It was a night for salad Nicoise.

The night before that, the zucchinis were ripe, the basil plentiful and a ratatouille was born.

Jacobs’ backyard on Crosman Avenue is divided into about eight garden beds. There she grows more than 10 varieties of tomatoes, several strains of basil, kale, beans, zucchini, radishes blueberries, raspberries, kale, squash, cucumbers,  oregano and mint. She is trying to get asparagus going.

On her porch in pots, she has lettuce, strawberries and herbs. On the side of the house grows the broccoli rabe, dill, chives, thyme and cilantro.

“Each year I build on the year before. I see what works and what didn’t and I build on the soil,” said Jacobs,  the editor of the Jewish Journal, a bi-weekly newspaper.

Behind the beds, in a fenced area, 12 chickens peck about the bushes and grounds. From there, they have access to a coop in the garage where they go at dusk to sleep.

Jacobs and her spouse, Andrea Ring, have two children, Ruby, 11, and Alex, 14. Jacobs sometimes calls Alex the “chicken whisperer” because he is handy with the gauze or whatever is needed when a chicken gets injured. Both children help harvest the crops and tend to the chickens.

Growing up in New Jersey, Jacobs had no real garden. Then she moved to San Francisco for about 20 years, where it was too cold to grow much. She lived in a condo for some of those years and by the time she moved to Swampscott, in a house with a yard, she was ready for her garden.

She began small, with a few plots, dug from the lawn, but had mixed results. Tall maple trees in her yard and arborvitaes blocked the sun. However, over the years, snow ruined many of these tall trees and now, the sun shines all day.

“It was bad for the trees, but good for my garden,” said Jacobs.

She starts all her crops from organic seeds under lights in her basement. She harvests seaweed from the beach and chicken poop from her yard and uses these materials to prepare rich soil for her seedlings. She layers materials, using  “lasagna gardening,” to create a soil that gets richer each year.

Then, as she peels cucumbers, cores berries and creates organic waste, this goes right into the chicken feed or the garden, creating a symbiotic relationship.

The chickens were a natural extension of Jacobs’ interest in the living from her land. She started with four chickens just over a year ago, raising them as chicks under lights. Then, she added four more and is now raising four more.

“Once you have eight, you might as well have 12,” she said, describing the chickens as low-maintenance pets.

The varieties of chickens are all able to survive in the New England climate. She has barred rocks, bantams, americuanas, orpingtons and other species.  They are brown speckled, white, red and some have frizzy feathers or fuzzy feet.

Jacobs has truly learned where the phrase “pecking order” comes from as she often has to shield younger chickens from older ones and introduce them to each other carefully or they can dangerously peck each other. Her son Alex keeps the gauze and bandages handy for these emergencies.

As the tomatoes ripen, the real work begins. Jacobs will need to cook sauces, prepare pesto, freeze and can vegetables and find ways to use her harvest into the winter.

She is generous with friends, neighbors and co-workers, frequently offering fresh eggs, “laid with love” and the bounty of her garden. She enjoys giving it away.

“We are not saving any money here, but we are not doing it for the economics. It’s a fun hobby and the kids enjoy it,” Jacobs said.