Sheep farmer Chris Reeks has faced the worst winter period he can remember. Now he is gearing up for his most challenging - and muddy - spring lambing season.
Four of his ewes drowned in the floods which followed Storm Babet last October. The waters were rising so fast they enveloped the animals before he could reach them.
He saved 12 of the group grazing on the Euston Estate, near Thetford, but the loss has been traumatic.
He did manage to get to around 100 lambs stuck in rising waters and pull them to safety as parts of the estate disappeared under sudden lakes. At one stage he even used a boat to get to his stranded animals.
The agony didn't end there. Last week, his loader - carrying vital winter feed to his pregnant ewes - got completely bogged down in the mud. Other farm vehicles have also got stuck along the boggy tracks.
Now he is just a fortnight from his busy lambing period - and hoping for the best. He lambs outdoors so benign weather conditions are vital.
The fields where Chris's 2,000-strong flock normally graze are still flooded - although thankfully the waters are starting to subside.
As a result of the flooding, he has been forced to put his pregnant ewes out on stubble fields and bring in costly feed to tide them over the winter and early spring.
With his 600 ewes due to lamb soon, he is hoping that his lambing paddocks will dry out in time - but he is still not entirely sure.
Normally ewes will carry two lambs but some carry triplets and these need extra feed and care.
"It's been a most challenging year. Half of the Euston Estate where I graze has been under water and we have had to put the pregnant ewes on stubble fields and feed them.
"Usually they would be on those fields under water and they are still under water," he explains.
"It's without question the most difficult winter we have been through - and early spring. It has been massively challenging."
Psychologically it's been a hard few months too, he admits.
"It has been very difficult. To look after the ewes as you would like to has been very challenging.
"You can't get anywhere. There's so much you can't do because it's so wet."
As a result of all the setbacks he estimates his costs have doubled - with the feed and the extra things the sheep need because they are not on the grass.
"Thankfully it's just starting to turn a corner now and we put the ewes on some of the land. I'm just praying they dry before the lambing starts," he says.
Chris co-owns La Hogue Farm Shop at Chippenham, near Newmarket, and started his sheep sideline 12 years ago on the Euston Estate so that he could sell the meat from the shop and give himself another income.
But this last five months has been exceptional. He knows an 80-year-old who has never seen a winter like this one, he says. "There are places under water which in those 80 years have never been under water before," he adds.
After months of record rainfall even when there is a dry spell the ground is so saturated it takes very little to top it up again.
"The problem is it's nationwide and there's nowhere for it to go now," he says.
"You are constantly getting stuck trying to get to them (the sheep). Vehicles are a no-no."
He despairs of weather forecasts - which can be hugely wide of the mark. "It's deeply frustrating," he says.
But with the waters subsiding at long last he hopes to gather his ewes in the lambing paddocks.
"As long as we don't have more significant rain in the next two weeks we will be OK," he says.
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