When the farmers' market winds down, around noon, I head to Takatu Lodge, a couple of miles from the market, where I'm going to spend the night. Takatu—the name in Maori means well prepared—is a serene and luxurious accommodation owned by Heather and John Forsman and set in the midst of their vineyard. Dean Betts, a transplanted San Diegan who was executive chef for California's Fish Market seafood chain before he moved to New Zealand in 1994 to become chef and partner at a group of seafood restaurants in Auckland, will be making dinner tonight for a small party with the help of his Australian wife, Toni. Dean now lives in Matakana, and though he's now semiretired, he is frequently called upon by area hosts to cook for guests, using fish caught from surrounding waters and other local ingredients.

As the sun begins to dip behind Mount Tamahunga, we sample Dean's creations: lightly smoked salmon layered on toast, eggy whitebait fritters dolloped with tangy garlic aïoli, and kingfish carpaccio dressed with lemon juice and chile oil, all accompanied by Takatu's own crisp pinot gris. Although John Forsman is unable to join us (he's a full-time pilot for Air New Zealand), Heather and their pregnant daughter, Josephine, are there, as are New Zealand food writer Lauraine Jacobs and her husband, Murray. We talk about the day's happenings at the market and agree that we are truly blessed to be sharing such a meal on a sparkling summer night, with the Milky Way visible above, scattering white, powdery freckles across the navy blue night sky.

One of the most inspiring things about this corner of the North Island is the mutual admiration society that exists among food and wine people here. From the poshest boutique winemaker to the crunchiest organic farmer, everyone seems eager to boast not of his or her own talents and projects but of those of neighboring farmers or producers. One place everyone in Matakana talks about is Brick Bay, the estate built by market patrons Christine and Richard Didsbury, where we've been invited for lunch. Approaching the house up a gravel driveway, we pass rows of vines and an ancient-looking grass spiral, one of many art installations on the property. As we round a bend, a turret peeks out from behind a hill. The first word that comes to mind when the whole house appears is otherworldly—an impression borne out by the grand living space and kitchen inside, with wooden planks and gangways overhead, connecting the various levels and rooms of the house like those in the game Chutes and Ladders.

Christine serves us an alfresco lunch of plump fresh figs stuffed with a mixture of herbs and cheese, Greg Scopas's sausages, and her own pinot gris and then takes me on a tour of the sprawling grounds. As Christine tells me about the years the family (she and Richard have two daughters) spent living in a caravan on the property before they decided where to build their house, we walk past giant orange hibiscus flowers hanging above persimmon and pear trees, pass underneath an archway of passion fruit vines, and then skirt a forest of citrus trees, continuing toward the vineyard—planted with pinot gris, cabernet sauvignon, merlot, cabernet franc, and malbec (the Brick Bay winery has recently released its eighth vintage)—which is Christine's personal project and passion. Richard is more focused on the farmers' market and an art house cinema he wants to build next door. "The market is the social heart of this region," says Christine. "It's a neutral place where the community can interact."

Rainbow Valley Farm could be considered the opposite of Brick Bay. We arrive at happy hour, when the students who live on the farm and help sell the week's harvest at the market kick back with some home brew after a hard day's work. Our car is greeted by a chaotic gang of dogs, pigs, baby ducks, wood pigeons, peacocks, and chickens, all milling about on the property, which feels more like a jungle oasis than a farm. I follow a path made up of a mosaic of colorful broken tiles that skim the bush and lead up to the fairy-tale turf-roofed house. When Polaischer and Allen bought the property 18 years ago, it was considered rubbish land by local farmers. "The early years were hard going," says Polaischer, as we enjoy some of his students' lemony beer and a bowl of Allen's garden vegetable soup, made with carrots, leeks, and potatoes pulled fresh from the garden. "But in permaculture we always say, 'The problem is the solution.'"

Today Polaischer and Allen have about a thousand fruit and nut trees, an aquaculture pond system, several herb and vegetable gardens, a root cellar, and a compost outhouse that has a wall made from recycled glass bottles that could be considered a piece of art. I'm in awe of how successfully they have created a community that is not only almost completely self-sustaining (they grow nearly everything they need to feed everyone who lives there) but also beautiful. "We could be the example for the rest of the world for sustainable living," says Polaischer.

What is it that I find so appealing about Matakana, beyond the tropical splendor and the good food and wine? It could be a sense that people here live so joyfully and completely, even when they're working hard to harvest the land and make a living from it. A case in point: the Auton family, whose Omaha Blueberries farm we visit the next morning. After having triplets—Jack, William, and Sarah, now eight—Shannon and Robert Auton decided to leave city life in Auckland behind, so they bought a rundown orchard and turned it into a business that now produces ten to 15 tons of a dozen varieties of blueberry every season. The fruit is shipped all over the country, fresh and frozen, and fresh to the UK and the United Arab Emirates or turned into juice, ice cream, and sorbet to be sold at the market. At a table on their back patio, Robert serves his brood blueberry pancakes while Shannon prepares her pillowy blueberry brioche in the kitchen and William gleefully stokes my fears of swimming in local shark-infested waters. Robert explains that he had to learn everything from scratch. "It is a lot of work, not just in the fields, but the marketing, managing a staff…but this is what makes it worth it," he says, stretching his arm out toward the gray-blue water lapping up to their backyard and his children getting up from clean plates to dart across the lawn after their Jack Russell terrier, Red.

Leaving the Autons, we drive to a place called Sandspit, only a couple of miles from Matakana, to visit tart maker Lynne Curry and her husband, statistician Pete Mullins. The couple met comparatively late in life—they have five children from their previous marriages between them—and have such a smitten charm about them that it would be easy to spend every day in their company, drinking wine and eating tarts. Pete pours us some chilled local pinot gris and compliments his wife's cooking, as Lynne spoons the filling for her zucchini tart into a puff pastry shell and tells me how she became such an accomplished baker. "I grew up in Shannon, on the North Island, and I baked a lot as a child," she says. "After church, my parents would take a rest while I would bake something for tea." Like many children in New Zealand who grow up in the country, Lynne attended boarding school. "At school the food was so awful that I would take cookbooks out of the library and read them at night in bed," she says. "In New Zealand at the time, it was just frowned upon to be into food. But now that has changed."

On the last day of my trip, I visit another couple I've met at the farmers' market: Dale DeMeulemeester and his partner, Jo Bradshaw, who sell sour orange juice and a popular sparkling wine and a liqueur made from feijoa, a tropical fruit of South American origin sometimes called pineapple guava (after the two fruits whose flavors resemble its own). As we pull up to their farm, Lothlorien, named for the elfin forest in The Lord of the Rings, I spot DeMeulemeester, lanky and fit, with a beard that would make ZZ Top envious, on his way to get the cow for milking. Originally from Detroit, Dale came to New Zealand in the '70s with the woman who was to become his wife to start a commune and never left. He bought the land, at the time a dairy farm, and planted it to feijoa trees, hoping he could make a living selling the fruit. "Unfortunately," he says, "we learned that Kiwis are not interested in buying feijoas, because everyone has a feijoa tree in their backyard. It looked like we had made a big mistake." After struggling with the orchard for years and raising four children, Dale and his wife separated. Jo had been living and working on Lothlorien with her three children, and eventually she and Dale became a couple and had a child of their own together. Jo is an excellent home cook, using only the fruit and vegetables grown on the farm. While we sit down to a breakfast of homemade bread topped with fresh churned butter, sliced avocados from the garden, and corn relish, Dale tells us how he started making wine with his feijoas. "At first we gave it away for free," he says, "but we gave a bottle to an actress friend, and she gave it to a famous TV personality, who promised to promote it if we started producing the wine commercially." Today Lothlorien Winery sells 60,000 bottles a year, and Dale's and Jo's children now manage the winery business; some of them have begun building their own houses on the property.

"I chose this life, and it was fun, even when we were struggling," says Dale. "But it's better that my kids didn't have money at first. They had to work hard growing up. Then the wine business came along, right before they would have had to go away and find work elsewhere, and now they are able to stay here."

I tell Dale how very lucky they are, but of course he already knows that.