For the most part, Susan Maslar's one-and-a-half-acre Fleetville property easily could be transported to the early 20th century. With its chicken coops and rows upon rows of produce, it's exactly the type of yard people relied on in pre-grocery store America.
Of course, most of those folks didn't have greenhouses, or grow a couple dozen types of heirloom tomatoes, as Maslar does.
Hers is an old-school version of gardening with a decidedly new-school twist.
What started as a small backyard garden for Maslar has literally grown into a 30-by-70-foot supplemental form of income. For the past six years, she has overseen her own Community Supported Agriculture operation or CSA.
Every other week beginning in early June and continuing through the end of September, her eight customers - she can accommodate as many as 12 - receive a basket filled with seasonal vegetables. For an extra fee, they also can receive fresh-cut flowers Maslar grows on the property.
“They never know how much they're going to receive, but it's always a lot,” said Maslar, who, when not gardening, runs a dog grooming business. “People are just thrilled with it. Because they know where their food is coming from.”
Maslar's operation is 100 percent organic. She uses no pesticides or chemicals. She composts, and collects rain water in 55-gallon drums. Her 18 chickens (they're strictly egg layers, not future food) and pet rabbits Wilbur and Trixie help fertilize the soil with their droppings.
“It's just better for the environment. I don't want to eat anything that's been sprayed,” Maslar said of the organic approach.
Thanks to the greenhouse attached to the garage built by Maslar's resident Fix-It, husband Andy, she can start her plants from seed during the cold-weather months.
Maslar also installed the garden's 15 raised beds, which combat the property's poor drainage and warm up quickly during the spring.
“The ground has to be warm, not just the air temperature,” Maslar said.
And the beds never stay empty. When one plant has yielded its crop, she simply replaces it with something else.
The question isn't what Maslar grows in her garden, but rather, what doesn't she grow? As Maslar put it, “I grow everything from asparagus to zucchini.”
You enter the fenced-in area through an arbor consisting of two kinds of pole beans - Italian and Vietnamese. “They get really long, like 2 feet,” Maslar said of the latter.
There are beets, carrots, eggplant, parsnips, leeks, peppers, cucumbers, summer and winter squash, broccoli, kale, Swiss chard, escarole, endive, arugula, yukon gold and kennebec potatoes, onions, shallots, garlic, kohlrabi, savoy and smooth-leaf cabbage.
She grows herbs like basil, parsley and chives, and has a small orchard made up of plum and peach trees and blueberry bushes down by her natural pond.
Perhaps the garden's most impressive feature is its 30 types of tomatoes, from cherry to esoteric heirlooms like indigo rose, which have a blackish hue, and Polish linguisa, which look like peppers. “I use those for salsa,” Maslar said.
Her flowers, which she also grows in pots in the greenhouse and sells, include day lilies, irises, foxglove, clematis, roses, petunias, marigolds, snapdragons and geraniums.
A native of Justus, Maslar said her father, the late Joseph Yablonski, first gave her a small patch of his garden to till when she was just 8 years old.
When she and her husband bought the property two decades ago, it took a great deal of time and effort to get it garden-ready.
“It was a bramble patch. It looked nothing like this. It was all overgrown,'' she said.
Maslar started off with just five raised beds. Then it grew when a friend encouraged her to start the CSA.
A few years ago, Maslar took her skills to the next level when she became a master gardener through Penn State Cooperative Extension. She spends part of her time volunteering at the Abington Community Garden, and thoroughly enjoys sharing her knowledge with newcomers to the hobby.
“Start small. Don't have a garden bigger than you can care for,” she said. “And grow what you like to eat. And do your research.”
And, most importantly, enjoy it.
“It's relaxing and very rewarding,” she said. “It's a lot of work. But it's a labor of love.”
