THE only life 83-year-old jersey cow breeder Pat McDonald ever really wanted can be found in the 120-acre cluster of green paddocks he calls home on the outskirts of Muwillumbah.

It's a magnificent piece of land overlooked by mountain ranges - including the world-heritage listed Wollumbin, part of a "volcanic plug of the now-gone Tweed volcano” - and surrounded at each boundary by the relentless march of cane into what was traditionally dairy country until the price of milk turned foul.

The legendary Australian dairy farmer, who was forced to take a break from his routine this week due to wet weather, admits he never wanted to do anything else, and his heart wouldn't let him even if he tried.

His father began breeding jersey cows the same year he was born, and that proved fateful in a way.

Last August, after 83-and-a-bit-years perfecting the art of breeding some of the country's finest jersey cows, he and his wife Trish travelled to the Ekka with their best cow and found out she was better than they thought.

Ekka Jersey judge Matt Templeton told media Kenarie Jade Finch was an "easy winner” and that she could "handle competition anywhere in the world ... she really is that good”.

Five-year-old Kenarie Jade Finch claimed supreme champion cow, prompting the third-generation dairy farmer to say: "It's one of the great days of my showing career”, and he knew "her best years were ahead of her”.

But, as Pat would find out, life on the land can be fickle. As he puts it, "I believe in bad luck more than good luck.”

And in January this year, lightning struck down one of his greatest achievements.

Pat shakes his head when asked about it.

"I've never had bad luck like two cows getting struck, they were about the two best cows I had,” he says.

"We would've had about 250-head of cattle on the farm the same night, why did it have to be those two cows? That is terrible luck. A lot of people say, 'Aw, yeah, you can say that, everyone loses something and she was my best cow'. But they were my best cows.”

Kenarie Jade Finch was to crown what had been termed the Sale of the Half Century, when 53 Kenarie (which is the name of Pat's farm) cows were to be sold off to mark 53 years of breeding for the stud.

As it was, they still bought buyers in by the busload, such is the lofty heights the quiet Murwillumbah farmer is held by those who know.

Often, those sorts of sales mean a farmer is retiring or going broke. But Pat says it was neither and he'll keep going until the day he dies.

As he says: "It's the only life I ever wanted, I never wanted to do anything else. I was born and bred in it.

"Right from even before I started school, I'd be watching my father plough with the horses, and I s'pose all I wanted to do was what he was doing.”