We’re more of a salsa

We’ve all heard the “melting pot” and “mixing bowl” analogies for how people and cultures come together.

The melting pot imagines our differences blending into something new. The mixing bowl suggests that we can come together while maintaining our own distinct identities.

Both offer something useful. But I’m not sure either gets it quite right.

Here in Boone, I like to think of us as more of a salsa…

Each individual ingredient brings its own flavor, but the magic is in what happens when they all come together.

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, either. 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.

When you think about who makes up our Boone community, there is tremendous diversity in our means, ages, backgrounds, cultures and philosophies. We are longtime locals and newcomers, working families and retirees, students and faculty, farmers and artists, visitors and people whose families have called these mountains home for generations.

And on Saturday mornings, we meet one another at the Market.

I often say that the Market is for everyone.

A farmers’ market is one of those increasingly rare places where people who might otherwise move through very different worlds find themselves sharing the same space. We stand in the same lines. Listen to the same music. Admire the same flowers. Eat food grown from the same mountain soil. Our children play together. We talk to people we might never have had another reason to meet.

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

People bring different languages, histories, traditions, skills, perspectives and ways of being. Those differences aren’t obstacles to community. They’re part of what gives a place its particular flavor.

The Market gives us a bowl to gather in.

Food, craft, music and celebration bring us together.

And maybe togetherness is the lime juice - the thing that runs between all those distinct ingredients and somehow makes the whole thing sing.

Suddenly, we’ve got something pretty delicious.

This Saturday, we’ll bring that spirit to life through our annual Día Latino, honoring Hispanic heritage and the people, traditions, food, music and dance that make up such a vibrant part of our community.

And what better way to celebrate both our distinct cultural identities and what happens when we come together than with a Salsa Show-Off?

Come taste and vote in the salsa competition, learn some new salsa moves with Latin Dance Boone, and let the beauty and rhythm of Las Rosas y Claveles set the mood for your morning.

Immigrant Justice Coalition Tamale Fundraiser
Beginning at 8 a.m. until sold out

Salsa Show-Off 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.

We’re grateful to celebrate alongside our featured guests and co-hosts: The Meeting Place, Immigrant Justice Coalition, and the High Country Community Health Farmworker Outreach Program.

Plus, the Hunger & Health Coalition will join us in the Donation Station.

Come bring your own particular flavor to the mix.

The Market is for everyone.

—Michelle, Market Director

P.S. One of the ways we make sure the Market is for everyone is through our food access programming. Your vote could help us earn funds to support this work. Will you support our bid to become America’s Favorite Farmers’ Market? Thank you for voting!