Julie Patton: Seeking moments of light in wintery rain

The calves bellowed, wondering why breakfast was taking so long.

Another bout of heavy rain predicted for this afternoon ... so there goes the driveway again. We've just recovered from the last dumping which wasn't even a week ago, an unexpected and apparently very local deluge in the wee small hours.

Never before has so much rain fallen so fast on us: 110mm in around two hours. The drains couldn't cope and the centre of the rotary milking shed filled up with water, drowning the milk lift pump.

The sun rose - not that we could see it, lurking as it was behind thick grey clouds - on a dismal scene. The cowshed was full of mud and rocks washed in from an overflowing culvert, water lay across the main road and our front paddocks, the one sheep which had refused to move from the paddock by the creek ran frantically up and down looking for her lamb.

The cows couldn't be milked - some were cut off by the creek still rushing over the bridge and the herd that made it to the shed couldn't be milked anyway because the pump was dead. The calves bellowed, wondering why breakfast was taking so long.

Fortunately, we had enough milk to feed the pet lamb because it bawls whenever it sees anyone anyway, thinking it needs to be fed. If you had the temerity to actually miss a mealtime, it would deafen you with its prolonged and piercing bleats.

But our driveway, which so far had withstood the rigours of winter, was ruined. The surface gravel had washed into the drains, exposing the rocks underneath and the deep channels and ruts gouged through it. We negotiated it carefully for the next few days and Bazza worked hard with grader and loads of fresh metal to restore it to usability - in time for tonight's front. Let's hope the drenching isn't quite so intense.

Last week's flood also brought to the surface all the garbage that the slobs driving past the farm fling out their car windows into the ditch and this all clogged the culvert by the driveway. Nice.

It wasn't just the rain affecting our poor driveway, either. Bruce had done a lovely job of installing solar lights at the entrance because, as anyone who has visited us at night could testify, it's very tricky to find. The lights were a brilliant guide and saved a few nosedives into the ditch. He had just added a few more, to stunning effect, but perhaps it drew too much attention. I headed out one night and admired the effect of our sparkling lights - but when I came home a couple of hours later, just two sad, lonely little lights remained. Yes, some lowlife had apparently decided our lights would look better in their garden, so nicked all but two that they were too lazy to reach because they were across water-filled ditches. Thus are our small pleasures in life ruined.

It could all be rather depressing, as this time of the year often is: calving has been going since July and there still seem to be so many left to calve; the weather refuses to play nicely; and spring refuses to arrive. So everyone is tired, and sick of the mud, and damp and cold and all the time-consuming jobs that go with calving.

But we are lucky to have our children to lighten things up, particularly our teenage son who decided to liven up the morning routine (which I feel is already quite lively enough, thank you very much) by putting all the clocks in the kitchen forward 10 minutes. It certainly worked - it must be the only time Bruce has ever been early for a meeting and the other kids have been in the car before me, ready to catch the bus.