Watauga County Farmers Market

08/31/2026

Yesterday was truly remarkable. ❤️

We hoped Día Latino would bring people together. We couldn’t have anticipated just how wholeheartedly this community would embrace it.

Participation was through the roof. Traffic backed up to the highways in both directions. The line to sample salsa never disappeared. Every tamale on-site was eaten. People gave generously. Students showed up to report on the celebration. New faces found their way into the Market and felt welcome.

And people didn’t just come to watch - they became part of it.

Vendors left their booths to dance, competed in the Salsa Show-Off, grew ingredients for the recipes and embraced performers and visitors as they moved through the Market. Community members lovingly prepared enough salsa to share with hundreds of strangers, some writing out the histories and family stories behind their recipes. Local businesses donated prizes to celebrate them.

People arrived with enthusiasm or simply came for their usual Saturday morning and found themselves swept up in it.

It was a moving thing to witness.

Because Boone didn’t simply attend Día Latino. Boone embraced it.

And in a time when immigrant communities are carrying very real uncertainty, that kind of welcome matters. A welcoming community is built through more than celebration. It’s built by supporting organizations working alongside immigrant communities, patronizing immigrant-owned businesses, continuing to give generously when we have the means, listening to one another’s stories, and showing through our actions that our immigrant neighbors are valued here.

Yesterday, we got to see what that looks like.

Farmers grew the food. Families shared their recipes. Dancers shared their culture. Businesses contributed. Organizations served. Students told the story. And thousands of neighbors showed up ready to receive it all.

Gracias to everyone who brought something of themselves to this day. What happened at the Market yesterday was so special - and we won’t soon forget it. 💚

08/28/2026

Your Saturday morning is looking pretty good from here. ☀️

Late-summer tomatoes and peppers. Early apples and melons. Fresh flowers. Something cold to sip. Art you didn’t know you needed. A basket that somehow gets heavier with every lap around the Market. And plenty of familiar faces along the way.

Tomorrow, we get to do it all again - with a little extra flavor!🌶️💃✨

Día Latino returns to the Market this Saturday with salsa tasting and voting, Latin dance, Las Rosas y Claveles, tamales and more.

Plus, Hunger & Health Coalition, Inc. joins us in the Donation Station. ❤️ Double your SNAP/EBT and Farmers’ Market Nutrition Program dollars at the Info Booth through Double Up Food Bucks, and skip the parking shuffle by catching the Appalcart Gray Route to the Market. 🚌

Come hungry. Fill your basket. Find your people.

Saturday | 8 - 12 | Daniel Boone Park

08/27/2026

Melting pot… mixing bowl… we like to think of ourselves as more of a salsa! 🌶️

The tomato is still a tomato. The cilantro is still cilantro. The chile doesn’t have to become less spicy to belong. In fact, the salsa depends on each ingredient bringing its particular character to the whole.

But the ingredients don’t merely sit beside one another. They interact. Each changes the experience of the others, and together they create something that none could create alone.

The magic isn’t sameness. It’s combination.

On Saturday mornings, the Market gives us a bowl to gather in. We bring different histories, traditions, perspectives and ways of being.

We stand in the same lines, listen to the same music, admire the same flowers, eat food grown from the same mountain soil, and talk to people we might never otherwise have had a reason to meet.

We don’t have to become the same to belong to the same community.

Maybe it’s togetherness that is the lime juice - the thing that runs between all those distinct ingredients and somehow makes the whole thing sing. ❤️ 🍋‍🟩

This Saturday, we’ll celebrate that spirit with Día Latino at the Market ~ complete with salsa tasting and salsa dancing!🍅💃🏻

Come bring your own particular flavor to the mix.

The Market is for everyone.

Read this week’s Market Musings, “We’re more of a salsa: How togetherness gives a community its flavor” - https://michelledineensmith.substack.com/p/were-more-of-a-salsa?r=62xg7z&utm_medium=ios

08/26/2026

This Saturday is going to be a good one. 🌶️💃

Salsa tasting, tamales, Latin dance, live performances, and so much more are headed to the Market for our annual Día Latino celebration!

Thanks to the Watauga Democrat for the feature. Read all about what’s coming this weekend - and then come join us! ❤️

BOONE — Día Latino returns to the Watauga County Farmers Market on Saturday, August 29, bringing Latin food, music, dance and community celebration to Daniel Boone Park from 8 a.m.

08/25/2026

We think something pretty special is happening here in Boone. And apparently, we’re not the only ones. 💛

Thank you to the Watauga Democrat for sharing the story of our Market - and some of the reasons we believe this little mountain market has a real shot at being named America’s Favorite Farmers’ Market.

For 53 seasons, this community has shown up for local farmers, makers and one another - rain or shine. Now we’re asking you to show up one more time.

Vote for Watauga County Farmers’ Market, and help us show the rest of the country what Boone already knows. 🌻

Every vote counts, and prize funds will directly support our food access programming.

Cast your vote here: https://markets.farmland.org/markets/311579

WATAUGA — The Watauga County Farmers Market is in the running for national recognition.

08/25/2026

💃🌶️ Día Latino returns to the Watauga County Farmers’ Market this Saturday!

Join us August 29 for a morning celebrating the food, music, dance, traditions and people that add so much flavor to our High Country community.

And this year, we’re adding something new: a Salsa Show-Off! 🍅🌶️🧅

Think your salsa has what it takes? Register by Wednesday night to compete! We’ll pay for your locally grown salsa ingredients, and winners will take home some amazing prizes. Then on Saturday, the community gets to taste the entries and choose their favorites!

✨ DÍA LATINO AT THE MARKET

🫔 IJC Tamale Fundraiser | 8 a.m. until sold out

🌶️ Salsa Show-Off Community Voting | 10 - 11:30 a.m.

💃 Salsa Demonstration with Latin Dance Boone | 10 a.m.

🌹 Las Rosas y Claveles Dance Performance | 10:30 a.m.

🏆 Salsa Show-Off Winners Announced | 11:45 a.m.

Throughout the morning, connect with The Meeting Place and the Immigrant Justice Coalition and visit the High Country Community Health Farmworker Outreach Program to learn about the people who help grow and harvest our region’s food and the resources available to agricultural workers in our community.

Come hungry, bring your dancing shoes and join us for Día Latino at the Market! ❤️

🌶️ Want to enter the Salsa Show-Off? Register by Wednesday night using the link provided in the first comment below.👇

📍 Daniel Boone Park: 591 Horn in the West Dr.
📅 Saturday, August 29
⏰ 8 a.m. - noon

08/24/2026

¡Aún hay tiempo para inscribirte en la competencia de preparación de salsa! Aquí están los premios para los ganadores. ¡Tienes hasta el miércoles para registrarte! No olviden que cubriremos el costo de los ingredientes. Revisa nuestro LinkTree para registrarte.

Si quieres ser voluntario, ¡podemos usar tu ayuda! Regístrate para ayudar en nuestro LinkTree.

¡Mil gracias a nuestros patrocinadores!

There is still time to enter the salsa making competition. Here are the prizes for the winners. You have until Wednesday to sign up! Don't forget we will cover the cost of the ingredients! Check our LinkTree to sign up.

If you want to volunteer, we can use your help! Sign up to help on our LinkTree.

Thanks a million to our sponsors!
boone .barandgrill Mexican rock

08/23/2026

Something is shifting.

The people of Boone are truly taking pride in their Market.

Yesterday, customers cheered on our parking attendants and thanked them for helping navigate a full lot. Board members and visitors pulled out their cameras to help us capture and share the morning.

And we discovered that both the newspaper reporter who came to tell our story and the tow truck driver who arrives at dawn to help clear the lot are Market regulars themselves - part of this community long before the work that brought them here that morning.

Students walked over or caught the bus to the Market with dorm rooms still waiting to be set up. Chefs from downtown restaurants found inspiration for seasonal specials. Children helped each other set up booths of their own. Seniors celebrated just how well they would eat after turning their Farmers’ Market Nutrition Program vouchers into bags full of fresh food.

Regulars gave visiting family and friends their own Market tours. Strangers shared insider tips about favorite vendors and how to make the most of a Saturday morning here.

None of these things are on anyone’s shopping list.

They happen when we stop thinking of a place only in terms of what we can get from it and start thinking about what we bring to it, too.

Somewhere along the way, people stop coming to the Market and start becoming part of it.

Because a farmers’ market isn’t something provided for a community. It’s something a community makes together.

And lately, everywhere we look, it feels like this community is all in for its Market.

What a thing to be proud of. 💚

08/21/2026

There is an abundance here that can’t quite be measured in baskets or bunches.

It’s in tables piled high with what our neighbors have grown, baked, raised and made. In familiar faces and chance encounters. In children growing up knowing the people who grow their food. In conversations between strangers who may not be strangers the next time they meet.

Week after week, all of these individual lives converge for a few hours on a Saturday morning - farmers and makers, families and friends, longtime regulars and first-time visitors.

We come for tomatoes and flowers, bread and eggs, sweet corn and something beautiful we didn’t know we needed.

And somewhere along the way, we find each other.

Come be part of it tomorrow. 🌻

At the Market this Saturday 8/22:

🍅Salsa Contest registration - sign up to collect ingredients and enter the Immigrant Justice Coalition contest at Dia Latino next week (8/29)!
🎶 Dave Brewer’s Foscoe Four in the Music Tent
🎨 Youth Makers’ Market with the Watauga Arts Council in the Kids Corner
🥕 F.A.R.M. Cafe in the Donation Station
🚌 Appalcart’s Saturday Gray Route serves the Market every half hour beginning at 9:42 AM
🥕 SNAP/EBT & Farmers’ Market Nutrition Programs DOUBLED at the Market Info Booth

Watauga County Farmers' Market
Saturday | 8 AM - 12 PM
Daniel Boone Park
591 Horn in the West Dr. Boone

08/20/2026

What happens when someone comes to Boone for a weekend, four years - or maybe forever?

They become part of this place.

And we believe the farmers’ market can help all of us become better neighbors.

For some, the Market is their first introduction to a 100% local, producer-only economy - the realization that the farmer, baker, artist or craftsperson behind the table actually made or grew what they’re selling.

For someone else, it’s the first taste of a sun-ripened heirloom tomato at its absolute peak. The discovery of an up-and-coming local band. A place where SNAP/EBT dollars stretch further. A conversation with the person who grew your food. A Saturday morning that slowly begins to feel like somewhere you belong.

Something sparks.

This week’s Market Musings is about what happens when we invite people into the life of a place - and how a four-hour farmers’ market can ripple far beyond the parking lot into how we eat, create, care for our land, support our neighbors and participate in our community.

As Boone fills up again this fall, let’s welcome folks in.

You never know what might spark.✨

Read this week’s Market Musings - The Market spark: https://michelledineensmith.substack.com/p/the-market-spark?r=62xg7z&utm_medium=ios