There are plenty of people who will look back and say "we've just had a proper winter". Then there are those a little older who will say "it was nothing like '63". And still a few who can say they were about in '47.

"In '47,", they say, "the snow was so deep that when we were digging the lanes clear, when we got a bit of a sweat on we could hang our jacket on the telephone wires."

I've had enough winter for this year and if that's it, that will suit me fine. I would rather have, and don't mind, winter weather in the winter.

I don't like it in April and May. We have a May fair around here which falls on the first weekend of the month. You won't believe the times I've stood there, cold and wet, the surrounding hills white, waiting for the children to have had enough and come home.

You feel such a prat standing there with a goldfish and sleet going down your neck.

My favourite harbinger of spring was always the first daffodil, though I suspect that if I'm to have one for St David's Day this year I'll have to pick it a bud out of the garden and put it in the microwave.

I now prefer the lengthening days and the extra hours of daylight that I get when I have a lot of driving to do. But it's always nice to see lambs about.

I haven't seen many yet because, I suspect, they've been held indoors waiting for better weather, but what few I have seen looked fit and well.

I've always liked sheep, but don't really miss them and I don't miss lambing them or, for that matter, going around for a couple of weeks shaped like the settee I've been sleeping on.

There are always good stories with sheep farming. We used to have a postman who had a smallholding and everyone on the round would know the ups and downs of his farming life in great detail as long as you had time to listen.

I always had time to listen because he came to us early in the morning and would come in to the milking parlour and tell me all about everything for a quarter of an hour, whether I liked it or not. It usually took a cow with loose bowels to splatter his uniform to shift him on his way.

"That big Suffolk ewe of ours will lamb today," he told me. "Her's been sickening all night. I reckon she'll have three lambs at least, could be four. I can't stop too long (thank goodness for that, I thought). I need to push on to get home to see if she's all right."

The rest of the story was told me by his daughter. The big Suffolk ewe had not lambed by 3pm, so when his two sons came home from work, they decided to take her to the vet.

They went in to the shed where the ewe was running with the other ewes and father held the torch while the other two tried to catch her. She wasn't going to be caught easily and there was a bit of running around.

"Hold that torch still, father."

"You two will never catch her the way you're going on."

"Now he's dropped the bloody torch, I told you to keep still."

"I can't find it in the dark."

"Doesn't matter, I've caught her now."

So the big ewe was manhandled in to their little van, one son riding in the back with the ewe, the other two in the front, and off they went to the vets. The vet was waiting for them and told them to put her up on the table. The ewe had a bit of a rest in the van and was still full of fight, but eventually the three of them got her on to the table.

The two sons held her steady, father mopped his brow and the vet approached her nether regions to examine her.

"Bet you don't get many ewes as big as that," said the postman. "How many lambs do you think she's carrying?"

"I don't think she's carrying any."

"Course she is, she's been trying to lamb all day, she's either going to have one great big one or three or four."

"If you come around here and have a look, you will see that you have brought me a ram."

He never told anyone that story on his rounds. Good job his daughter did.

Similar story, same theme. Some new people to the area had bought an isolated cottage with a two-acre orchard. Seeing themselves as farmers, they bought two 12-month-old lambs to graze the grass down.

At the appropriate time, they put their two lambs in to the flock of a neighbouring farmer so they had the opportunity to breed.

Come spring, they approached a friend of mine to sheer the lambs.

He thought it a wonderful evening's work because they gave him a cup of tea before he started, several glasses of wine when he finished and £20 for his trouble.

The two sheep now had names and Mary was the first up to be sheared. "Mary's had a little lamb, Mr Jones," said the lady as the wool was peeled off.

That's got a bit of a ring to it, might make a good nursery rhyme.

After Mary was sheared it was Ivy's turn.

"Ivy hasn't had a lamb yet, Mr Jones."

"No, I can see that, and, I don't think she ever will."

"Oh dear, why ever not?"

"Well," and the shearing stopped for a moment as he embarked on a biology lesson. "You see this little button thing on her belly? Well, that's where she pees, and if she pees there it means she's a boy, not a girl, and therefore, in my experience, unlikely to ever have a lamb."

The lamb was duly sheared and released, renamed Ivor and as far as I know is still grazing the orchard down happily, leaving Mary to keep the freezer stocked with a lamb every year.