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 Get that sunscreen ready! For those in the know, Sunday 15th November will mark the official beginning of summer. The legendary Toast Martinborough Wine Food & Music Festival, now in its 18th year, is the annual showcase of quality wine produced in the award-winning region. Held on the third Sunday in November each year, the festival sees the population of the village swell tenfold as wine and food lovers from throughout New Zealand and abroad come to celebrate the release of the new vintage and enjoy New Zealand’s premium wine, food and music festival. Each of the 11 participating vineyards features a selection of new and limited release wines superbly matched to culinary delights from Wellington and the Wairarapa’s top restaurants, accompanied by some of New Zealand’s finest live entertainment. Vynfields and Escarpment vineyards are new additions to the programme for this year’s festival.
 Guaranteed to have you laughing until you cry, in the first of an ongoing series from his blog, Moon over Martinborough, Jared Gulian brings you his delightful tales of city boy farmers living a simple yet deeply satisfying life in one of the world’s most beautiful places.
Old Man Henry is our geriatric rooster. He is mangy and decrepit. The feathers on his head are just quill stubble. He’s half blind, bow-legged, and he pauses strangely after every step. On certain misty mornings, when the light is right, he looks as though he’s stepped out of some twisted chicken fancier’s version of Dawn of the Dead.
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 It’s not hard to fall for the Wairarapa; and a weekly blog, ‘Moon over Martinborough’ by an ex-pat American, describes just such a love affair with this region.
Jared Gulian and his partner typify the diversity of people drawn to the Wairarapa. Originally from the Detroit area, Jared wound up in Wellington via a stint in Japan. It was a nomadic trail that found him putting down roots on a rural property on Martinborough’s fringe.
 Elsewhere, they’re agonizing over the recession but in Greytown, retailers have collectively been spending millions of dollars in a flurry of development unprecedented in recent years. Three large new retail spaces have sprung up within one short stretch of Main Street, a landmark pub is receiving a $1 million plus makeover, and several new businesses have opened in the space of a few months. Anne Taylor asked is Greytown simply the most positive little town in New Zealand right now?..
 Strawberries and raspberries on sale well into May are just some of the delights available at Dot and Alan Bissett’s Wee Red Barn on SH2 north of Masterton. Behind the barn shop, the couple also grow blackberries, blueberries, gooseberries, grapevines, olives, and vegetables on their 8.2 acre plot. Visitors to the shop are encouraged to wander around outside, follow the foraging hens or meet Crackle the Pig and her piglets.
 The Wairarapa is full of amazing places to visit that are off the beaten track and are not well known to visitors and even locals. Fensham Reserve is one such place. Just five minutes west of Carterton, Fensham is 29 hectares of primary and regenerating native bush, and a further three hectares of wetlands, all administered by Forest and Bird and open to the public. A Key Native Ecosystem (KNE) in the Wellington Region and home to the endangered brown mudfish, it was gifted to the Royal Forest and Bird Society by the late John Fensham, who was well ahead of his time in his wish that the reserve be preserved for future generations.
 Martinborough is a small town with a big heart. At the beginning of July the Ruamahanga Health Trust was able to report that the new Health Centre, officially opened in January 2008, was debt-free - thanks to a number of huge community fundraising efforts.
According to the South Wairarapa District Council’s website, the population of Martinborough stood at 1320 at the 2006 census.
In the third of a series Barbara Gillham visits the vineyards of North Wairarapa, discovering the beauty and abundance of fine wines. JOSEPH RYAN VINEYARD  One of many ‘young’ but growing boutique vineyards in the Wairarapa is Joseph Ryan in East Taratahi Road Gladstone. This family owned vineyard is gaining a name both here and overseas for producing some truly outstanding wines. Established in 2001 the vineyard is situated on the stony river terraces by the Ruamahunga River. In a valley between the beautiful Tararua Mountain Ranges to the west and the Maungarakei hills to the east its setting is truly ‘picture perfect.’
 Having survived another Winter, we decided to dust off our walking boots and head for a new and unventured part of New Zealands’ back country. Our new adventure takes us to the South Eastern most tip of the North Island, Kawakawa Station and its 2 day 2 night walk.
We arrived later afternoon at Kawakawa Cottage to be greeted by our hosts, the Furniss family. After our briefing on the following days walk we were left in our modest, yet comfortable accommodation to enjoy the tasty and generous portioned meals that they had supplied for us.
 Enter the doors of Greytown’s Schoc Chocolates and pause to inhale. All in the world (well your world at least) is immediately righted. The warm richness of the chocolate produced in this elegant studio wraps itself around you and instantly calms and reassures you. The studio is a tiny turn-of-the century cottage which is the original confectioner’s shop appropriately positioned right next to Cobblestones Museum. This is where owners and creators, Roger Simpson and Murray Langham and their team of talented chocolatiers have been producing a stunning range of hand-made tablets, individual chocolates and truffles since 2004.
 The Gladstone Scarecrows Big Day Out, running this year on Saturday November 7th, occurs in the peak of spring time when Wairarapa’s rural outlook is at its best.
The countryside wakes fresh and shimmering from its winter slumber and the locals get ready to ‘let loose the larakin within’ to entertain visitors with their annual scarecrow display, scarecrow ‘scamper’ fun run, scarecrow spring ball and school scarecrow fair.
 Maori legend provided award winning designer Rod Schofield with the inspiration for Destination Wairarapa’s new logo. “I remembered the legend from a school play about the naming of the Wairarapa.,” he says. The great Maori explorer Haunui stood on the summit of the Rimutaka Hill and saw Lake Wairarapa sparkling in the sunlight beneath him so named the region “glistening waters”.
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