The online voting for Grace Orchard has proved fruitful for Kalispell Middle School.

With 30,725 votes, the middle school took first place in a contest to win a fruit orchard from Dreyer’s Fruit Bars and The Fruit Tree Planting Foundation.

The top five winning organizations from the first round of voting were announced Thursday.

The orchard project is named after retiring KMS Principal Barry Grace.

A team of experts from The Fruit Tree Planting Foundation will provide plants, materials and equipment, and will lead community workshops and training of community volunteers to install the orchard.

The plan is to locate the orchard behind the middle school.

The school’s Community Care Team — made up of staffers who work to improve the student environment — filled out an application and was chosen among 100 organizations to compete in the online voting.  

Community Care Team coordinator Allison Mitchell said they made it a goal to take first place in the first round. With daily announcements to vote, a lot of emailing, Facebooking and word of mouth, they swept the first round with 2,405 more votes than the runner-up.

“The most amazing part was it brought our community together around winning this orchard,” Mitchell said. “That’s why we got more than 30,000 votes.”

Mitchell said the orchard would increase the school’s access to fresh food and become an outdoor classroom for students to learn how to care for an orchard in addition to the school’s eight raised garden beds.

Fruit will go directly to the school cafeteria, and as the orchard matures, it may provide enough fruit to donate to local food banks.

Mitchell said it is important to instill in children the importance of eating not just fresh fruit but food produced locally.

Read more about the “Grace Orchard: Nourishing Connections at KMS” project at www.communitiestakeroot.com.

Reporter Hilary Matheson may be reached at 758-4431 or by email at [email protected].