Steven Leov's cowshed. Photo / Koroglen Jerseys Facebook

Steven Leov is waiting to assess the damage on his Marlborough farm, after what he reckons is the worst flooding he's ever seen.

Leov runs 300 Jerseys on his 500-hectare family farm in the Rai Valley, along with his parents, who take care of the sheep and beef side of the operation. The farm has been in the family for just over 100 years.

While he was no stranger to heavy rain, last night's deluge was something else, Leov told The Country's Rowena Duncum.

"We do get quite a lot of floods in the Rai so we're sort of used to it a wee bit but this, I would say, is probably the worst I've ever seen in my lifetime."

Leov wrote on his of Koroglen Jerseys Facebook page that last night the Rai River peaked at over 700 cubic metres a second and dropped to 300 this morning. Since then it has returned to over 600 cubic metres a second.

His post also said that, according to the Marlborough District Council website, in a 24-hour period, the Rai Falls had 456 millimetres of rain, with over 569 millimetres of rain for the Tunakino River.

There are 90 hectares of flat paddocks on Leov's farm and he estimated 75 to 80 per cent of it was underwater last night.

He said 50 per cent of the flat was still flooded when the rain eased up this morning.

"It's just really, really wet eh? There's just water everywhere at the moment."

It wasn't just wet either, with the water coming up "pretty high," overnight, he said.

"It came through our bobby calf shed and was right up to the level of our cow shed."

The farm's location meant it was bound to happen now and then, Leov said.

"It's just one of those things eh, if you farm on a river flat you're gonna get floods."

Leov was able to get the milking in yesterday when the rain eased around 10 o'clock but today was more of a struggle.

"We have not been able to milk this morning – we're going to try and go down in a minute and try and get the water down.

"At the moment, the middle of our rotary's full of water like a swimming pool, so we've got to try and drain that water out, and then try and dry the electrics and see if we can actually milk."

The floodwater didn't seem to deter his stock, however.

"The girls have actually taken themselves to the cow shed anyway; they've broken the gate down and walked to the shed," he laughed.

Luckily the milking shed is on a promontory and around half a metre higher than last night's flood water.

"It was the only thing really sticking out [above the water] on our flats."

Now Leov said he was waiting to get out and see what damage had been done to the rest of the farm.

"I imagine that probably most of the fencing will be gone – thankfully there's only a one wire fence and so that's not a big issue.

"It's [just] that you don't know what you're going to find – like, will the irrigation still be there, you know, what sort of trees have come down – all that sort of stuff really."

As for stock losses, Leov said he'd been "pretty lucky," especially since calving had started.

He said a couple of calves had "just come out and died because there's puddles everywhere," but so far he hadn't lost any cows.

Calving was a busy time on-farm and the loss of grass was also a blow, he said.

"It just means there's going to be silt everywhere and it's going to be a lot more work – thankfully we've still got a lot of baleage on hand, but it's not the same as the green grass on our paddocks 24 hours ago."

Despite this, he remained pragmatic about his situation.

"There's nothing you can do about it – you can't fight nature can you – you've just got to work with it and sometimes it's a bit of a pain."

Leov posted images of his farm on Facebook and had received support from the online community.

"That's one of the good things about social media – there's a lot of people that contact you and offer help and stuff like that."

He'd also been contacted by Fonterra and was now waiting for access to the farm to be restored so life could go on.

"I've been in touch with the guys who service our milking machines but they literally can't get to Rai at the moment because all the roads are closed."

The Leovs had been through a "hell of a run" lately as the flooding came a week after a bout of Covid kept everyone indoors, he said.

"We've sort of all had everything in the space of a fortnight."

His children were having a hard time but it had nothing to do with the rain, he said.

"The biggest problem for the kids is that they smashed their lolly jar yesterday, so they were a bit gutted about that."