What it is
A small farmers market in an extraordinary spot. Every Friday morning since 2001, growers and bakers have set up in Sundial Circle, the plaza at the center of Carefree, under a 90-foot sundial from 1959 and, since 2011, inside the four-acre Carefree Desert Gardens that were built around it. The organizer is Arizona Community Farmers Markets, which also runs the Saturday market in Old Town Scottsdale and several others across the Valley, so the stalls are the familiar kind: Arizona seasonal produce, herbs and cut flowers, bread and pastry, natural meats and seafood, honey, salsas and jams, with a handful of craft tables at the edges.
It runs all year, which surprises people who know Carefree as a winter town. From October through May the hours are 9 to 1. From June through September the market opens at 8, closes at 11, and shifts to the Sanderson Lincoln Pavilion end of the gardens, where there is shade and the misters run.
Why leave Scottsdale for it
Not for the shopping, which you can do on Saturday in Old Town with more vendors and more stock. For the Friday. Carefree is 38 minutes north and the market is the excuse to be there on a weekday morning, when the plaza, the galleries and the gardens are at their quietest and the whole downtown fits inside a two-hour walk: market, sundial, garden loop, a scone at the English Rose or lunch at Venues Café beside the dial. For visitors with a kitchen at a rental or a resort casita it is also the practical market for the north end of the city, closer than Old Town for anyone staying at the Boulders, Troon or Desert Mountain.
The practical version
Fridays, 9 to 1 in the cool months, 8 to 11 in summer, at 1 Sundial Circle. Free parking on Easy Street, Ho Hum Road and the lots behind the plaza. Bring a bag and cash for the smaller stalls, though most take cards. On the Carefree art-festival weekends the market moves across from Town Hall; the organizer’s page and the market’s Facebook post the location each week.
When to go
Nine o’clock from October through May. The first hour has the citrus in winter, the greens and strawberries in early spring, the stone fruit in late spring, and the bread. By noon the stalls are thinning. Eight o’clock from June through September, when the market is a short, shaded errand under the pavilion and the misters, and the town is pleasant until the sun clears the boulder hills. Festival Fridays, in January, March and the fall, when the fine-art shows set up on the surrounding streets, the market relocates for the day and the town is busier than it ever otherwise is; the two together make the best Friday of the Carefree year if you can tolerate the parking.
What to buy
Whatever is in season, which in Arizona runs backward from the rest of the country: winter is the harvest, summer is the lean time. Citrus from December, Medjool dates, greens and root vegetables through the cool months, strawberries in March, tomatoes and melons in late spring and early summer, chiles in September. The bread and pastry stalls are the reliable constant, and the meat and seafood vendors are the reason regulars bring a cooler. Our what to eat note has the Arizona ingredients worth carrying home.
The two-hour Friday
- Market at opening.
- The garden loop with the bag, counterclockwise, finishing at the crested saguaro by the pavilion.
- Read the sundial; it runs about 28 minutes behind your phone, on purpose.
- Galleries on Easy Street.
- Tea at the English Rose or lunch at Venues Café, then Cave Creek or Civana for the afternoon.
With kids
A small market with a reflecting pool, a giant sundial and a pavilion lawn is a better Friday morning than most; let them pick a pastry and a vegetable they have not met.
The story
The market dates to 2001, when Carefree was a town of a few thousand with a sundial plaza and not much reason to stand in it on a weekday. Arizona Community Farmers Markets, which was then building a Valley-wide circuit of neighborhood markets, took the Friday slot and has kept it for a quarter century. The plaza changed around it: in 2011 the town rebuilt Sundial Circle as the Carefree Desert Gardens, four acres of labeled Sonoran plants with the Sanderson Lincoln Pavilion at one end, and the market gained shade, a stage and a reason for the summer schedule. From 2015 to 2019 it shared its Octobers with Ray Villafane’s Enchanted Pumpkin Garden, when the plaza filled with carved pumpkins and the market’s Fridays were briefly the busiest of the year. The pumpkins have not come back; the market never left.
The Scottsdale connection
The same organizer runs the Old Town Scottsdale Farmers Market on Saturdays, which is the one visitors know, so this is the Friday sibling at the other end of Scottsdale Road. For the far north of the city, which has no market of its own, Carefree’s Friday is the neighborhood market; Troon, Desert Mountain and Boulders residents treat it that way. It is also one of the few things in Carefree that happens on a weekday, which makes it the anchor for a Friday north of the 101 that the Saturday crowds in Cave Creek never see.
Getting there
Scottsdale Road north across Carefree Highway, where it becomes Tom Darlington Drive; right on Cave Creek Road, left on Easy Street. The plaza is on your left inside the gardens, and the market is visible from the road. From the Airpark, Pima Road north to Cave Creek Road is faster. Allow 38 minutes from Old Town and 15 from Pinnacle Peak. Parking is free and fills only on festival weekends, when the side streets off Ho Hum Road are the answer.