"Everyone has got a story to tell in these challenging times," West Otago farmer Allan Richardson says.
The South continues to grapple with the damage caused by wind gusts reaching up to 150kmh on October 23.
"As farmers we understand these natural events, we don’t enjoy them but we know it is part of farming and we’ve had our share of them."
Mr Richardson and his wife Sonia own and operate the organic 800ha sheep and beef farm Avalon in Park Hill, near Heriot.
October had been tough on Avalon, Mr Richardson said.
A ewe on his farm, Ultimate 3404/21, had two lambs on October 3.
Heavy rain, twice as much forecast, flooded some of the farm two days later and one of her lambs was never found, either drowned or mismothered.
During the wind event, the ewe and her remaining lamb sheltered by a stand of macrocarpa trees.
A tree fell, downing a powerline, its live wires electrocuting both sheep and killing them instantly.
He had heard similar stories of the wind event killing livestock in West Otago including a neighbour losing two sire bulls.
As a result of the event, power supply to the farm was down for five days.
A generator was shared between his family and their two neighbours to get through.
"It is amazing how communities work together."
During the power outage, about 5cm of snow settled on Avalon.
Most of the major snow events in the past decade on Avalon had hit in September and October.
"It is hard because those months are the business end for sheep and beef farmers."
Sheep and beef farm systems were prepared for snow events in winter but they were at its mercy when it hit in spring.
The past two springs had been challenging in terms of growing feed for livestock, he said.
The snow and constant cold winds last month had stunted pasture growth.
"It has been a real battle."
Being short of feed applied as much pressure to a farm system as a weather event, he said.
Avalon was an organic farm system, so it could be difficult to source any suitable supplementary feed when a shortage was biting.
Due to a lack of feed last spring, he decided to put the ram out a week later this year, so up to 75% of his lambs would arrive in early October, when there was a greater chance of it being hot enough to grow pasture.
"It has taken the pressure off."
Farmers often focused on getting lambs to the works before Christmas but often the spring weather made that challenging.
A farm system should be designed for navigating a season rather than chasing a premium from meat processors, he said.
He would continue to put the rams out later.
Other refinements to his farm system include reducing the amount of winter crop grown each year and moving towards an all-grass wintering system to reduce costs and to protect the soil.
As the lambs now arrive later in spring, the grass had more time to grow to feed them, he said.
Any fallen trees blocking access to paddocks would be cleared first and the rest would remain there for a while.
Reasons for the cleanup delay includes the strong demand for diggers required to remove large trees, he said.
Also sheep and beef farmers were flat out on farm up to Christmas.
The wind event had created "a lot of work, just to get back to zero".
"We’ve all got a repair bill, which we hadn’t budgeted on."
A pattern emerging was mild winters followed by snowstorms in spring.
"When farmers start saying that they’ve had a great winter, they need to be aware because the winter is still to come and the last two years have proved that."
