Call it good luck or good management, but when it mattered most, Stuart and Julie Green were able to grow hay while the rain fell on their north Victorian farm.

But to reach that point, they first had to hold their nerve. They knew making panicked decisions would do no good.

Over the past two years, the Greens laboured through the most challenging conditions in living memory at their sheep farm in Benalla.

“It was probably the driest since it’s been here,” Stuart Green said.

Throughout much of regional and rural Victoria, lush pasture has come roaring back in paddocks that were eaten down to bare earth just months ago. The worst of Victoria’s most recent drought might be over, but it has not yet entirely bitten the dust either.

Some parts of the state, including south-west Victoria, s

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