TIVERTON – Sandywoods Farm, an art and sustainable agriculture community, has won a fruit tree orchard in a national competition.
Sandywoods announced Thursday it had won the fourth and final round of voting in the Communities Take Root program, an initiative of the Fruit Tree Planting Foundation and Edy’s Fruit Bars.
This year, the second for the program, saw 131 applicants vie for online votes to win one of 20 fruit tree orchards. In each of four rounds, the five organizations with the most votes were named winners.
“It’s exciting,” Russ Smith, Sandywoods Farm community outreach/program coordinator, about the outpouring of support over the past month. “Mostly we just want to thank everyone who voted. Every vote has helped, and there were some who made voting a part of their daily routine.”
Sandywoods Farm came out on top in the final voting round, which ended at midnight on Thursday, with more than 30,000 votes.
Members of the farm will now begin coordinating with the Fruit Tree Planting Foundation to arrange for a team, including an arborist, to travel to Tiverton to assess the site and determine what will be planted.
Although a timeline has not yet been finalized, Smith told Providence Business News, “Once we have a date for the planting, everyone is invited to come out and celebrate.”
“We’re a nonprofit community. The idea is that everything here is open for people to enjoy,” he added.
Roughly 40 fruit trees and bushes are expected to be planted by the Foundation at the farm, with the plants coming from local nurseries.
The other four winners in the final round were: Klamath Trinity Resource Conservation District, Hoopa, Calif.; South Plains Food Bank, Lubbock, Texas; The Arboretum at Johnston Community College, Smithfield, N.C.; and Wrangell Medical Center, Wrangell, Ark.
Also in New England, Friends of Edgewood Park in New Haven, Conn., was also named an orchard recipient in an earlier round.
Sandywoods, which opened less than a year ago, is an art and sustainable agriculture community with 50 rental units and another 22 single-family house lots for low- to moderate-income families. It has a working farm, community garden and resources for residents and visiting artists, including gallery, studio and performance spaces.
