BEMIDJI — Starting on July 1, Chris Tower started his job as farm manager at the Bemidji Community Food Shelf, thanks to a grant from the Northwest Minnesota Foundation.

The grant covers Tower’s position for two years, as well as some projects to expand the farm.

“I think this job kind of found me,” Tower said. “I’ve done a lot of work in schoolyard garden education.”

Tower graduated from Bemidji State in 1983 with a degree in mass communication. He spent 15 years in broadcasting and advertising before transitioning to the education field, later earning a master’s degree in education from the University of Minnesota.

Since, he taught 4th and 5th grade for 21 years in Edina and spent two years as Director of Distance Learning at the Bell Museum of Natural History in Minneapolis before relocating back to Bemidji.

Tower said the farm is doing well considering its recent start.

“The farm is in its second year of production,” he said. “This year it’s totally flourishing, and that has to do with grants that we’ve received to purchase equipment, tractors, high hoop tunnels.”

However, he added the farm can’t survive off of grants forever, and the food shelf is looking for ways to sustain the farm on its own.

Tower said he’s glad to be the one to figure it all out.

“I moved here, and I’m not going anywhere,” he said. “It’s a job I get to do. I look at it as, ‘I get to do this job,’ and I’m thrilled to do it.”

The grant from the NMF covers Tower’s position part-time for two years, but he hopes the farm’s sustainability ideas turn it into a long-term, full-time job.

“I hope the job doesn’t end after two years,” he said. “My intention is to get it to a point where it’s sustainable so the farm is able to hire a manager with its own funding. Right now I’m only part-time, but this could easily be a full-time job during the summer.”

All of Tower’s goals for the farm are with the customers in mind, and he said he likes how rewarding his new position is.

“To be able to produce, grow healthy vegetables that are going to families in need is a huge success for us, and a wonderful feeling you get just doing it,” he said.

The Bemidji Community Food Shelf will be one of five locations along the Bemidji Sustainable Places Tour today at 1 and 3 p.m. Among the sustainability methods it will be showing is its high hoop tunnel, which extends the growing season through the use of rainwater for irrigation.