New friends: Tanya Gold with lambs from the Little Witch FarmThere's a muddy track down to Little Witch Farm.
The sky is low and grey, and in the distance Mount Snowdon glowers over the landscape. As I approach, a sheepdog barks at me - intruder!
In the farmhouse, I meet Myrddin Davies. He is going to teach me how to deliver a lamb. His family have reared sheep on this land for five generations.
Myrddin, 27, is tall, handsome and gentle-looking - if I were a sheep, I guess, I would want him to feed and water me.
Lamb is my favourite meat but, unlike other city women, I have never believed it comes from the lamb tree. No, as I bite into the pink, sweet, delicious flesh, I know it comes from a (formerly) living creature.
But what really goes on at a sheep farm? As BBC2 yesterday launched Lambing Live, a sort of X Factor with pregnant sheep, I am here to find out.
The premise of Lambing Live is simple - presenter Kate Humble has spent the past six months regularly visiting a farm near Abergavenny, helping to choose a ram and checking on the sheep during their pregnancy. Now, it's show time!
I've come in at a rather later stage. Little Witch Farm has 500 sheep on its 180 acres and 150 of those, says Myrddin, are due to give birth this week - another 350 will come to term at the end of the month.
That's a lot of pregnant females. Will there be chaos?
For most of the year, these sheep roam the fields of Little Witch Farm, stuffing themselves on the rich Welsh grass and thinking unknowable sheepy thoughts.
But, nearly five months ago, these sheep had - for them - an unusual experience. They had sex.
The ram, apparently, comes in and has sex with about 60 sheep in one afternoon.
Each sheep gets less than a minute of attention, then he's off to the next, without even a kiss. It sounds rubbish, like dating Warren Beatty.
The lambing shed is light and surprisingly warm, because it is built in a hollow.
There's a thick lashing of straw on the ground and Radio Cymru is playing.
Myrddin says: 'It's good to get them used to human voices.' Radio Cymru isn't 24-hour though, so in the dark hours they also get Radio 5 Live. According to Myrddin, quite a large number of lambs are born listening to that.
The miracle of birth: Tanya learns the ropes of lambing as she helps Myrddin Davies deliver a newborn lamb The sheep are pretty Lleyns - white, fluffy and enormous, like Pavarotti crossed with a consignment of rugs. Their breath stains the air and makes it look like they are all smoking.
The ones who are still pregnant are in big communal pens, eating. When they aren't eating, they are staring. That is all sheep seem to do - eat and stare. As one, they stare at me. They have golden eyes, I notice.
The ones who have had their babies are in small pens - just one sheep and her lambs - for bonding, because sheep are so stupid they often need to be reminded that they have a lamb.
I help Myrddin feed the sheep. They need 24-hour-aday care during lambing, and Myrddin and his parents have to get up in the middle of the night to check on them.
We walk down the row of pens, adding hay to troughs and water to buckets.
They eat a mixture of clover, turnips, hay and oats, which Myrddin grows here. We give them a vitamin pill as well, which they inexplicably love.
They begin to baa with excitement - one baas first, then another and then they all explode in a massive chorus, which sounds a bit like the choir of King's College, Cambridge, in full song.
Then we lay new straw on the floor. The three-day-old lambs are Disney-gorgeous, with curly tails and bright eyes. One is asleep on the floor, halfbalanced on her mother's head.
But the newborns are less photogenic. They are wool-less and have disproportionately huge ears. They look a bit like miniature donkeys wearing yellow carpets.
So, how will we know when the sheep is ready to give birth?
'She will probably start to kick the ground with her front legs,' Myrddin explains. 'Then she will lie down in a quiet corner.'
'Oh,' I say, waving at a prone sheep. 'She's in labour! Her baby is coming!' Myrddin peers at the sheep. 'No,' he says, 'she is just tired.' How can she be tired? She doesn't do anything.
How else can you tell if a sheep's in labour?
'She will emit a bubble from her behind,' Myrddin says, 'and she will try to push.'
Sheep labour is usually brief - under an hour, the lucky things! - but, if no lamb appears within an hour, he will 'intervene'.
This means putting an orange plastic glove on - it goes all the way up to the shoulder - and going inside the sheep to pull out the lamb. I am desperately hoping to avoid this, but no.
Myrddin points at a panting sheep. She has been in labour for more than an hour. It is time to intervene.
I feel sick. But I will do it. I have to do it.
Myrddin walks over to the sheep. She struggles up and tries to flee, but he catches her easily. If you ever want to make a sheep lie down, then read the next sentence with care.
A mother gets acquainted with her newborn lamb at the Little Witch FarmYou fold one of its back legs under its body and it will collapse to the ground, due to the immutable laws of physics.
The sheep is now on her side, going through the agonies that all female mammals do - I feel a warm burst of empathy. 'Hold her head down,' he says.
I go to her head and put a hand on her neck, comfortingly. 'It's OK,' I say. 'You are having a baby! This is wonderful! You're doing brilliantly! It will be over soon.'
If Myrddin thinks I am an idiot for talking inspirationspeak to a sheep in labour, he says nothing.
His arm is inside her and his brow is scrunched in concentration because this isn't a day trip to countryside land for him, this is work.
'The lamb's head isn't straight,' he mutters and swiftly rights it. Then he pulls it out in a smooth movement. A small creature is now on the floor, covered in yellow liquid.
Yuk, I think. That is the most disgusting thing I have ever seen. It is more disgusting even than Pete Doherty's living room, which I once had the misfortune to see.
He sticks a piece of straw up the lamb's nostril to clear it and help it breathe. Then he stands it up - lambs need to stand up to suckle and they must have food within the first six hours.
The mother, meanwhile, looks utterly stunned.
If I think it's over, it isn't - this sheep is pregnant with twins. (Two is the normal number per pregnancy, although some have only one and a very few have three.)
And I, according to Myrddin, am going to deliver the second one - a prize I absolutely don't want. But I grimace and face it.
I peer at her behind. Two front legs are protruding from the sheep and Myrddin makes me grasp them in one hand, with a finger between the hooves, and pull gently.
I obey and, amazingly, a lamb explodes out of her, so fast I am astonished. I can't believe how hot its body is and how quickly it was all over.
To my surprise, the sensation is wonderful. This time, I do not see the yellow liquid and placenta and all the nasty stuff that falls out of females when we restock the planet.
I can only see that there is a perfectly formed living creature under my hand, shaking its head and trying to struggle to its feet, a miracle of life reborn.
Ok, actually, it's quite ugly. But I delivered it; I brought it forth. 'I want to name it Tanya,' I say to Myrddin. He turns it over. 'It's a boy,' he says, very matter-of-factly, indicating the evidence.
'I want to name it Tanya,' I repeat. 'OK,' he says.
I spend the rest of the day feeding, watering and mothering the sheep, waiting for another baby to come. 'Please stop calling them babies,' says Myrddin, as we do another feed. 'It's freaking me out.'
'They are babies,' I reply. 'Baby sheep.'
He shrugs. I also keep running over to the pen 'to check on Tanya'.
'You're getting too attached to Tanya,' says Myrddin. Perhaps he is right.
And that was my day at the farm. I loved its simplicity and the fact that I was the cleverest mammal in the shed when Myrddin was not around. Sheep are easy to feel superior to.
Do I mind that Tanya and his cousins will be on plates come summer?
Well, not really, because I saw how well they lived at Little Witch Farm, which I am now calling the Ritz Hotel of Sheep.
I don't believe in, on the one hand, sentimentalising animals - 'It's cute!' - but on the other, torturing them while they live. Treat them gracefully and eat them gratefully, I say.
But I do ask Myrddin if he will consider keeping Tanya for his own table.
He stares over the hill at the mountain and says he might.
• LAMBING Live is on BBC2 every night this week until Thursday at 8pm.
source: dailymail
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