From p1 //

forced to ‘‘dump’’ several tanks of milk.

‘‘It’s probably the worst time of year for this to happen – we’ve got calving, and so cows calving have to be milked,’’ he said.

The driveway to his property had been badly damaged, and the flooding had ‘‘wiped out all the fences’’ from the front of the property, but Shearer said ‘‘we’re probably better off than most people’’.

‘‘Some [farmers], the land got destroyed with the floodwaters. I guess we’re a bit more fortunate, we’ve got plenty of high ground,’’ he said.

‘‘The farm just down the road there, probably lost 20% of its land, just through silt and rubbish going across, which means they’re going to have to get 20% of their cows off.’’

Farmers in the area had ‘‘grouped together’’ to help each other clean up their properties, Shearer said, and there had been ‘‘amazing community support’’.

‘‘Everybody working together, which is neat,’’ he said.

‘‘The school and marae have been cooking meals for us, that’s been just incredible.’’

Shearer said Fonterra had organised a group of people to come up from Canterbury to help the farmers in the Pelorus and

Rai Valley areas to clear and rebuild their fences.

‘‘They’re brilliant in a disaster,’’ he said.

Another dairy farmer, Greg Thompson, was helping move livestock from his son’s farm in the Opouri River area on Wednesday.

The swelling of the river had caused damage to farms in the area and the road that connected them, which had been made accessible to 4-wheel-drive vehicles on Wednesday.

‘‘The biggest thing has been trying to move animals,’’ Thompson said.

His youngest son, also a farmer, got caught in the river on Thursday last week trying to rescue animals from his farm that had ended up in the river.

‘‘My youngest [son] got caught in the flood, he’s got pneumonia in both lungs, he’s pretty crook,’’ he said.

After ‘‘reluctantly’’ being taken to Wairau Hospital in Blenheim, Thompson said his son was already back on the farm, clearing flood damage on the property. He was nowhere to be seen on Wednesday.

At a farm across the road, Pam Harvey, who had lived there since 1978, said they still had no land line or cellphone coverage on Wednesday.

‘‘That rain was not like other rain. We have a lot of rain here, but this was over several days,’’ she said.

‘‘It’s rain valley – we’re the source of Marlborough’s rain.’’

On Friday, from 4.30pm to midnight, the farm’s rain gauge ‘‘overflowed,’’ recording nine and half inches of rain. Harvey said the gauge was reset at midnight, and by the time she had checked it the next morning, the gauge had recorded another nine inches of rain.

Though, the property itself had largely escaped any significant damage, and the farm hadn’t lost any livestock, she said they went without power for two days and were forced to rely on their generator.