I thought briefly about my own farm garden, busy paramedic school and yoga teacher training schedule, and said of course! Here’s how Mariam’s cattle panel hoop house grew, and along the way, these are directions so you can create your own homegrown cattle panel hoop house. I was visiting Mariam recently, when she turned to me and said, Jules, I really want a greenhouse. She grows everything from kiwis to goldenseal, and her climate is even colder at times than ours here in Cherry Plain, New York.

Mariam Massaro, owner of WiseWays Herbals and fellow llama lover, always wanted her own greenhouse. One of my favorite projects is to see a new greenhouse pop up, just like a mushroom in the forest, where once there was none. Then, we sit down to a wonderful meal together, pray over our food, and give thanks for our day together. The way we build our civilization is through working together, just like folks used to do back in the “old days.” True, we have new technology, and most of us carry cell phones, but we build our community through the judicious use of our collective muscle power. I have a lot of friends who are engaging in homesteading communities. Laura, thrilled to know she’d have shiitakes for their eight-member household this fall, agreed happily, then looked at me and said, We are growing our own civilization here aren’t we? to which I replied, Yes, we are. I offered to share Shiitake inoculant and process if Laura could send her oldest son to help us with more cut oak logs. We took a look at the fresh goldenseal in our wild beds then I showed her the cut oak logs for our soon-to-be inoculated new Shiitake mushroom garden. Laura thanked me again for sharing honey with her family while I grabbed an empty sugar container from our newest buzzing beehive.

We discussed the huge black bear near her place and the monster foxasauraus who’s been haunting our land.

Recently, my sweet neighbor of almost 20 years and soul sister Laura French came down the hill to give me more tomato plants, while I gave her more shallots from a fellow gardener Joanne, who had many to share. My cattle panel hoop house is a community gathering place.

Greenhouse trainer hello neighbor