The site of the destroyed Tūtaekurī River Bridge Photo: RNZ / Maja Burry
The clock is ticking for farmers who need to get stock off their land of ahead winter but are penned in because of cyclone damage.
Some small rural communities are still completely cut off and waiting for road repairs or bridge replacements that could be months away.
Sheep and beef farmer Patrick Crawshaw is in Waihoa, an isolated area of the Hawke's Bay cut-off by the Tūtaekurī River and Mangaone River.
Access to his farm has been restricted to a causeway over the Mangaone River which only light vehicles can use.
Before Cyclone Gabrielle, farmers were optimistic and had surplus feed, keeping stock on farms for longer to get a better carcass weight or sale price, Crawshaw told Checkpoint.
But when the cyclone hit, it took out access points to offload stock to market or other farms.
"There's a lot of carrying capacity still standing on farm which is eating a lot of feed that's now quite valuable feed and precious" going into winter, he said.
There were just under 3000 lambs between 10 properties further up country which were needing to be taken off farm by mid-February, he said.
Now, there wasn't only those lamb but others.
Farmers were going to walk, or swim, cattle out but Crawshaw said it was looking like the river current was too strong.
"We've had to find another solution which involves a tractor and trailer unit pulling a stock crate over the river and then ferrying them over and driving them up to a yard.
"We're quite creative and we've been able to piece these things together with the generosity of the wider community but there's a lot of moving parts to it."
It would require potentially three more handling processes than moving stock usually would, he said.
Bulk items, like fuel, have to be put on a tractor trailer and pulled across the river by dozer.
"It's quite an exercise to be able to do anything on a bulk scale which obviously a lot of these businesses rely on."