The gravel lot behind Tower's old train depot on Pine Street fills the same way every Friday afternoon from June through the tail end of summer: a scatter of folding tables, a cooler full of eggs, jars of honey catching the light, and Janna Goerdt from Fat Chicken Farm working the same corner she's worked since 2010. If you've lived around Tower long enough, you already know the rhythm. What you might not know is that nobody, not the city, not the vendors, not Goerdt herself, has ever posted a date for when it stops.
That's not an oversight. Tower's Farmers Market runs on the growing season, not a calendar. The city's own listing describes the season as starting in June and running "through the growing season to some time in September," which is a very different promise than what you'll find at most Minnesota markets. Compare that to a place like St. Louis's Tower Grove Farmers' Market, which prints an exact closing Saturday months in advance, or the dozens of Chicago-area markets that post their final week down to the day. Tower's market ends when the harvest and the weather decide it's over, which means if you're reading this in September, you're already inside the window that matters.
A Market Built Around One Farm, Not a Committee
Most established farmers markets have a board, a marketing budget, and a countdown clock. Tower's has Fat Chicken Farm. Goerdt bought an old dairy property near Embarrass in 2001, started farming it in earnest in 2009, and began hauling produce to the Tower Farmers Market the very next year. Fifteen-plus seasons later, she's still the person coordinating vendor sponsorships and running the table where SNAP and EBT shoppers can swap benefits for market tokens, a program that's been in place for years and lets those dollars stretch further on anything sold at the market.
That kind of continuity is rare for a market this size, and it shows up in the names that have anchored the vendor list over the years: Karl's Bread, Shelby's Pies, Grateful Hearts Family Kitchen, Bear Creek Acres, and Pike River Products, the handcrafted canvas and leather goods started by Terry and Dianna Sunsdahl. Lloyd's Woodworks has covered the crafters' side of the market, alongside photographers, needleworkers, and home canners who've treated Friday afternoon at the depot lot as their regular summer outlet. None of this reads like a pop-up scene assembled for tourists. It's the same small circle of Iron Range growers and makers who kept the tables full long before anyone thought to write about it.
What's Actually on the Tables
The mix runs wider than produce. Alongside the fruit and vegetables you'll find locally raised meats and eggs, wild rice, maple syrup, jams and hot sauces, home-canned goods, and baked items ranging from lefse to fruit pies. The craft side covers carving, fiber art, photography, and jewelry from makers working out of towns like Embarrass and the surrounding county. It's a small footprint, three hours, one afternoon a week, but it's dense with the kind of goods that don't show up at the gas station or the closest grocery in Virginia.
If you've only ever swung through for produce, September is worth a second look for a different reason. This far into the season, the tables are less about the first lettuce of summer and more about what a grower like Fat Chicken Farm has left after the busiest CSA weeks: honey, eggs, jams, and whatever the hoop houses in Embarrass are still producing before frost. It's the stretch where what's on the table tells you something true about what's actually ready right now, rather than what's been trucked in from somewhere warmer.
Building a Full Friday Out of It
The market itself only runs three hours, from 3 to 6 p.m., which leaves plenty of daylight to turn a quick stop into an actual evening out. Here's how a lot of locals seem to string it together:
- Hit the market between 3 and 6 p.m. at the Mini-park by the train tracks on Pine Street. Go early if you want first pick of the baked goods, since pies and bread tend to move fast.
- Head a few minutes into downtown for dinner. The Good Ol' Days Bar & Grill on Main Street covers the casual end, while Benchwarmer Grille and Tavern in the Bay round out the options if you want something different from last week.
- If you'd rather make the short drive out to the lake, Fortune Bay Resort Casino has the Sunset Steakhouse for dinner and the Sunset Patio for live music afterward, an outdoor space built specifically around evening shows with the water as a backdrop.
- Save Tower Cafe on Main Street for the next morning instead of dinner. It's open Wednesday through Sunday for breakfast and light lunch, and it's worth the stop if you're still in town.
None of this requires planning more than a few hours ahead, which is part of the point. Tower isn't a place where you need a reservation three weeks out to have a good Friday night.
Why the Vague Ending Actually Works in Your Favor
Here's the part that's easy to miss if you're used to markets that publish a hard closing date: because Tower's market doesn't announce one, there's no final farewell event to build up to and no risk of showing up the week after it's already ended without knowing. The tradeoff is that the market simply fades out, sometime once the growing season and the vendors decide it's done for the year. That means the smart move in early September isn't to wait for a "last market of the season" post to show up somewhere. It's to treat this Friday, and whichever ones follow, as if they might be the last, because one of them will be and nobody's going to send out a notice.
If you've been meaning to swing by the depot lot, meet the person actually growing the honey and eggs you've been buying at Natural Harvest Food Co-op in Virginia, or just wanted an excuse to grab dinner downtown instead of driving somewhere else, this is the stretch of the year to do it. The market doesn't owe you a countdown. It's already counting down whether it says so or not.
Tower's Friday routine is one of the small things that makes living here different from living somewhere with a Target and a food court. If a season of market Fridays and Sunset Patio evenings ever turns into a bigger question about what a home around Tower or Lake Vermilion is actually worth, that's a conversation Chessica Olson has with people all the time, remote buyers, longtime owners, and everyone in between. Get Your Instant Home Valuation whenever you're ready to find out.
