Well, it's been a while since I last wrote, back in December when I was out in Togo. The mission passed off well and with the local project team colleagues we've produced a proposal for a second project phase which will be submitted to donors for continuation of activities in central Togo.

Since then I've been back in the UK, looking for a job that will take me to pastures anew, hence the reason for not submitting any blogs up until now.

I have finally managed to land a job as project manager with an Irish NGO working in the Congo, but won't be going out until May - so watch this space.

In the meantime, I have managed to find a seasonal job lambing on a Welsh sheep hill farm in mid-Wales.

The farm size is 300 acres and 1,100 ewes are to be lambed over the coming few weeks. The breed is known as a 'mule' cross (blue-faced Leicester cross beulah speckled) mated to Texel rams and they actually started lambing before I arrived exactly two weeks ago.

Apart from a manic spurt on Sunday when the snow must have caused the sheep to speed up their lambing, things are more tranquil for the time being. "The calm before the storm," so says Robert, the farmer's son. He reckons that we could be busy with 40 or 50 ewes lambing a day!We'll see.

In the meantime I've been getting used to the farm routine, mainly feeding the ewes and their newborn lambs in the mornings and evenings in individual pens, helping newborn lambs suck their mum's udder as necessary, and helping turn them out once they're old enough to go on the hills.

Of course I have also been acting as a sheep midwife, helping pull any lambs being born with complications (for example, head out only, head and one leg, coming out back-side first, breech birth etc).

I always feel really elated when I've been able to correct a birth complication and pull out a live lamb. By the same token, I always feel a real sense of despondency and loss when it's a dead lamb that comes out. We did have a few ewes carrying twins that aborted the first lamb, with the second one still alive. Sometimes the lambs are born prematurely, and like premature babies we put them in a heated box, like an incubator, and tube-feed them artificial colostrum since they are too weak to suck the teats on the udder.

One of the great things about working on a farm is that there is always generous servings of delicious food to eat, which you need as you're burning it off with all the hard physical work and exertion. And one of the worst things is getting up in the middle of the night and braving the cold to go and check on the ewes in the lambing shed, although I'm getting used to it.

I started doing a stint at 2.30am, and have now switched to 4.30am. If it's not too busy, I can manage to grab half an hour back in my nice warm bed before being out by 6.30am and feeding time.

And so the days pass by, busy and full of the joys and sorrows that the lambing season entails. I should mention that the lambs from this farm, along with several other local farms, find their way into Waitrose and are marketed as original Welsh lamb. So that's my plug for the farm and its produce, and I can tell you that the home-reared lamb chops that I've had occasion to sample at a couple of dinner times are delicious and well worth savouring. And all the more fulfilling as they've been produced in this country by British farmers and their families, helping to support the agricultural industry and still keeping alive the heartland of the rural communities in the Welsh hills and valleys as generations before have done so.