The Marton Harvest Festival is on again. Come and celebrate the harvest season in true country fashion.

With over 160 quality stalls, food, music and fun. A day to bring the family, join your friends and neighbours and celebrate our history and our harvest.

It is our day to embrace our harvest in the myriad forms it takes in our region. It is an opportunity to let our hair down, to picnic together, enjoy the music and find all the gifts we need for the family and treats we want for ourselves.

Take a moment to check out the wood chopping demonstration and the vintage displays, these activities and equipment were both instrumental in forging our great town. With live Bluegrass tunes, the ambience of the fair will be a positively toe tapping event.

Our very special celebrity chef, Simon Gault, will be joining us for the day, giving a presentation and judging the Pumpkin Pie Baking Contest! Come along to learn new tips and tricks for creating your own culinary masterpieces!

This year we have a very special element we have added to the event. "Elope to the country - Win a Marton Harvest wedding" details of how you can win this $30,000 wedding and honey package are available on our website www.MartonNZ.com or check out the new "Elope to the country - Win a Marton Harvest Wedding" Facebook page.

Competition closes on the 28th February. The winners will celebrate their wedding right at the Marton Harvest Festival, followed by a 6 day Mountain to Sea honeymoon experiencing some of the very best of the Rangitikei.

Marton - Beer Starts here! Marton is the malting capital of New Zealand! Therefore it is only fitting we have our own Home Brew Competition. But just to let you know the competition is strong. One of Marton's favourite pastimes is home brewing, maybe born from our humble origins - (Originally, our town was set up a few miles down the road, until someone suggested it should be a dry town, so many rebellious locals uplifted all their belongings and moved further up the road and established Marton town, as well as some pretty impressive stills.

Marton is also home to Malteurop, NZs largest malting plant.) With Good George and Marton New World as our sponsors for this competition the winner will enjoy an all expenses trip to Hamilton to tour the Good George brewery.

If you would like to enter your brew into our competition feel free to grab a registration form from: projectmarton@xtra.co.nz.

Harvest time is also scarecrow time. So the local businesses, residents and organisations create a new scarecrow each year to help celebrate our rural connections.

Big, small, decorated, baked - pumpkins galore! The Harvest Festival is home to the pumpkins and all their multitude of varieties. Bring your pumpkin creation on the day by 10 am and go in to win.

Competitions include:

- Biggest pumpkin - can you beat the previous district winner at just 736kgs?

- Pumpkin decorating - from beastly and beautiful to the bizarre, get creative with pumpkins!

- Pumpkin pie bake-off - bring your ready-made pie to be judged by our celebrity chefs.

Our Giant pumpkins will be weighed on Saturday because we just couldn't get the machinery and hoists on Sunday to lift these monsters.

And in keeping with the celebration of our history, we will again be hosting a stunning display of vintage machinery, tractors and pumps.

Whatever you do, mark this in your diary to be sure to get along on the day and bring your friends and family. (Or even other people's friends and family.)