Hello, I am looking to buy or make some Purple Matin houses for northern MN. I can make the houses, but I would much rather buy a zero maintenance light weight synthetic house. Any recommendations on a house and pole combination would be great. Thank you as always.

I’m no help but interested in what other folks think

https://www.purplemartin.org/shop/
This is the link to the Purple Martin Association catalog. They have a bunch of different house designs and pole set ups to go with them. In my experience it’s easier to get martins started in the gourds and you can start with a few and add on more as colony grows.

https://www.purplemartin.org/shop/product/t14p/t-14-martin-house-plans/
I bought the plans to build the T-14 house which if you have just a little woodworking experience isn’t very hard. You will have to figure out a pole system or buy one and figure out how to attach the houses.

Make sure you buy some type of sparrow trap that can fit whatever design you go with, it’s critical to keep them trapped out of the nesting boxes until you get your colony established. Not bad idea to have a good pellet gun as well.
Martins should start showing up in your country toward end of April so ideally have the house up by then.

I've got several of these, several yrs old now. Seem to work fine for central tx. Amazon

Get the plastic gourds with clean out. friend of mine got into Martin's several years ago, he has houses and gourds,the martins always fill the gourds up first, all the big Martin guys use them, some of the racks have 24gourds and they have multiple racks.
The natural gourds work just as well but are a pain to clean out.