Where the sky still
gets properly dark.
A working olive grove and family holiday home just south of Martinborough — with small-batch extra virgin olive oil, three vintage Ferguson tractors, and a night sky that stops people mid-sentence.
Six acres, a few hundred olive trees, and no streetlights for miles.
Long Dark Sky is a real olive grove — pruned, mown, harvested and pressed every year — with a comfortable family house sitting in the middle of it. We press our own extra virgin olive oil, we keep three 1950s Ferguson tractors running, and on a clear night you can read the Milky Way from the back deck without moving the car.
It is five minutes from Martinborough's vineyards, half an hour from the wild south coast, and an easy drive over the hill from Wellington. Come for the wine, stay for the stars.
Four good reasons
The dark sky
We sit inside an accredited International Dark Sky Reserve. Step outside, let your eyes adjust for ten minutes, and the whole galaxy is right there.
Look up →
The olive oil
Six varieties, one grove, pressed in small batches. Galactic Kiwi, Galactic Grove and Galactic Tractor.
Taste it →
The tractors
Three Ferguson TEA20s, all still working. The same little grey tractor Sir Edmund Hillary drove to the South Pole.
The story →
The Wairarapa
Pinot noir on the doorstep, a seal colony down the road, and some of the best empty beaches in the country.
Explore →
Not a lifestyle block with a few trees on it
The grove runs on a real calendar. Pruning in late winter, flowering through spring, mowing all summer, and then the harvest — a tracked machine that clamps each trunk, shakes the fruit loose and catches it in an upturned umbrella before it ever touches the ground.
Fruit goes to the press within a day. That speed is most of what separates good oil from ordinary oil.
How the oil is made →
Genuinely good for families
There is a pool, a very large deck, a trampoline, and several acres of mown grass between you and anybody else. Kids here launch bottle rockets, run experiments after dark, pick apples, and occasionally grow a marrow the size of a small dog.
Adults tend to sit on the deck with a glass of something local and watch the sky change.
See the house →
The reason for the name
Most people have never actually seen the Milky Way. Not properly — not the dust lanes, the colour, the sheer density of it. Under a truly dark sky it is bright enough to cast a shadow, and it is genuinely startling the first time.
We have a telescope, red torches to save your night vision, and a lot of enthusiasm. Bring a warm coat; you will be outside longer than you planned.
Stargazing here →A place that keeps changing
Book a stay, or order some oil
Tell us roughly what you are after and we will come back to you personally — there is no call centre here, just us.