The Central Districts Field Days have all the fun of the fair - plus a serious agricultural side.
They started yesterday at Feilding's Manfeild Park, and continue through to 4pm on Saturday.
This year there are nearly 550 stalls and 38,000 visitors expected.
The days are for the whole lower North Island and are the biggest of New Zealand's regional field days, second only to the national ones at Mystery Creek near Hamilton every year.
Manfeild Park has been converted from a racetrack into a village for the occasion, with secondary tracks criss-crossing the race track and displays in the open air and in marquees and gazebos, large and small.
Massey University and Fonterra have monster displays of many parts.
There's a range of gleaming new farm equipment in all directions and everything else a farmer might need - from a cattlestop to a security camera, stock feed to fertiliser.
Then there's pure shopping - BMW cars, boats and motorhomes for the big items, but also woodburners, kitchenware, private schooling and clothing. Raincoats were on sale - but there wasn't much call for them.
Hunterville's Sam and Tris Weston, from a sheep and beef farm, weren't shopping for anything in particular. They've bought farm security gear and looked for calf feeders in the past.
"It's just a bit of a nosy, a day out and have a look around," Mrs Weston said.
The Conley family, from Wanganui, was doing something similar, though Mr Conley had bought a shirt.
Unlike the Westons they are not farmers, but like the Westons they go nearly every year.
"You just get good outdoor stuff, and a lot of it's cheap," Jan Conley said.
There was plenty of food on sale, from gourmet burgers and whitebait fritters to the standard hotdog and chips - and there was a tasting tent for produce, including nuts, whiskey, cheesecake and salami.
There were also the big spectacles - wood chopping and sawing competitions, tractor pulling competitions for the big rigs, boning demonstrations, seminars on Horizons' One Plan and live music - country, of course.
The wonders of technology were many. One was a moveable metal computerised sheep handler that will weigh sheep, hold them for drenching and checking udders or tilt them for dagging and crutching.
Tony Pearson, the managing director of Tecnico Energy Solutions Ltd in the Hutt Valley, came with a 3kW wind turbine sufficient to power the average house. He also has a 1.5kW one that will power a bach, lighthouse or caravan.
Their prices start at just over $20,000 and he uses data from the National Institute for Water and Atmospheric Research (Niwa) to find out how much wind there is at potential sites.
"They've got fairly extensive wind data around the country. There's usually enough to say whether it will work or not."
The turbines' blades are made of a glass polypropylene substance that will withstand the fiercest wind, and he said they were creating a huge amount of interest.
At the other end of the technology scale was the 22-tonne, $400,000 John Deere S680 maize harvester, a vast green behemoth.
"It's the pride of our fleet," New Zealand John Deere manager Mark Hamilton-Manns said.
It will harvest 12 rows of maize at a time, cutting it just above ground level and mulching the stubble behind it. It moves at a top speed of eight kph, communicating with the tractor towing a semi-trailer that catches the grain by machine sync.
It's made in Illinois in the United States, and Mr Hamilton-Manns said it was ideal for maize growers on heavy North Island country.
There were plenty of businesses from the Chronicle's coverage area represented: Palat-a-Bull Ltd, Larsens Concrete & Drainage, John Bartley from Stihl Shop Wanganui, Keown Honda, Whitelock Suzuki, Kiwispannz Wanganui and Burgess Matting & Surfacing to name a few.