On Wednesday, March 22, 2017, the fourth and fifth graders of Striar Hebrew Academy in Sharon took a trip to the Moose Hill Farm. Moose Hill is a wildlife sanctuary in Sharon Massachusetts. Moose Hill is Mass Audubon’s oldest wildlife sanctuary, which has protected forests, fields, and wetlands. Different hiking trails and a red maple swamp boardwalk provide many opportunities for exploration and fun.

We went to Moose Hill to learn about gardening. We visited a farmer named Matthew Noiseux. Our class learned about many things including animals that eat plants, what plants grow in different seasons, what to do with extra food that we grow, and what kind of scarecrow we could use to keep away destructive animals.

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There are different types of animals that affect gardens. Some are good for plants and some are harmful to plants. The helpful ones are bees and butterflies because they pollinate plants. Sharon also has destructive animals such as rabbits, woodchucks, squirrels, and deer. They are destructive because they eat plants.

There are different categories of plants: annual and perennial. Annual plants need to be replanted every year. These are some examples: peas, watermelon, and morning glories. Perennial plants grow each year without replanting. Some examples of perennial plants are: trees and morning glories ( morning glories can be perennial if they drop seeds.) We also talked about scarecrows which are used to keep away destructive animals. There are many kinds of scarecrows like modern day scarecrows which are called balloon owl eye scarecrows. An older kind of scarecrow is stuffed with straw and the straw is covered with clothes. We may use scarecrows to keep away animals.

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Matthew had many outdoor experiences including an outdoor job when he was just 8 years old. His job before working at Moose Hill was at Adams Park in Quincy. Matthew is an expert in gardening and he was able to give us useful information for our garden.

Matthew told us how wide to make the raised beds that we would grow our crops in. He reminded us that when we build a garden, we want to make sure that all the plants get watered and weeded. Therefore we would need to be able to reach more than halfway across on each side of the bed. That is why all the beds will have to be, at MOST, four feet wide.

One other thing we talked about was an electric fence. Matthew showed us a fence that had little metal wires sewed into it. When it is connected to special metal poles, it gives the animals a small shock if they touch it. This is important at a large farm like Moose Hill because it has 15 acres of land.

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