The Ball has been running for many years. Famous in NZ and overseas, it was started to help lonely Middlmarch farmers find a wife and to populate the town with a district nurse, teachers and other needed professions normally taken by women. However this year the committee has a problem. The ball has sold out but all the singles coming, to their horror, are female - there are no more Middlemarch farmers needing wives. There is only one thing to do - find single males; but the only men they can find willing to come are from Auckland - the very place most of the single women are from - so the men have to be given a crash course in farming to carry it off.