SPRING is just around the corner - and that means a heavy workload for farmers preparing for the balmy days of summer ahead. Here farming reporter JUSTIN HAWKINS talks to Steve Dun-ning of Raisbeck Hall Farm near Tebay, the chairman of Cumbria NFU, about what this special time of year means to him .

SPRINGTIME arrives in fits and starts for farmers in Cumbria. In lowland areas, lambing, that sure sign that winter is at last on the way out, has been in full-swing for a fortnight.

On higher ground, however, farmers are still preparing for the long nights of lambing to begin.

At Steve Dunning's Raisgill Hall sheep, beef and dairy in the uplands around Tebay, spring work has already begun ahead of the arrival of the lambs later this month.

"For us at the moment it's a question of getting ewes ready, getting them in the right body condition to come into lamb," said Steve.

There is a lot more to springtime than lambing though. In the fields, grass-land management work is making ready for the first cut of silage which will help see animals through winter.

At Raisgill Hall as elsewhere, the cut also prepares the way for turning cattle onto the fields after spending winter indoors. Steve aims to get his herd outdoors by the first week of May.

"A lot of work is also going into fencing and walling getting the fields ready to take the cattle and sheep," he said.

It is a feature of upland agriculture in this area that sheep which graze the fells in the summer are away-wintered'. It means that owners send their hoggs, or hoggettes - year-old ewes from which next season's crop of lambs will be bred - to lowland farms for good winter grazing away from the harsh excesses of the upland climate.

Steve has away-wintered his sheep at the same Carlisle dairy farm for more than 20 years and pays around £13 a head to graze them there from October to late March. At Raisgill Hall their return is what really heralds the onset of spring.

"I always think that when they come home spring has started for me because we can start getting sheep back onto the fell, things really start then," said Steve.

Spring, whenever it arrives is now, and has always been, the true start of the farming year. Nowadays, though, consumer trends increa-singly interfere with the natural rhythm of the farmers' calendar.

Time was that spring lamb, as the name suggests, was a seasonal thing. Now though, thanks mainly to super-markets buying in a global marketplace where every-thing is always in season somewhere around the world, shoppers expect to see new lamb all year round.

Steve, this year's Cumbria NFU county chairman, is heavily involved in selling direct to the consumer, or as he puts it, shortening the food chain' to try to secure more of the retail price of produce for the producers.

He is involved in a Kendal Rough Fell Lamb producers group. Between them the farmers in the group have had to coordinate tupping (mating of rams, or tups, with ewes) so that fresh lambs, around 70 each month, are available all year round.

As well as supplying local butchers with his beef and Kendal Rough Fell lamb, Steve is also involved in Orton Farmers Market, and is in a scheme offering overnight deliveries as far afield as London and Gloucestershire.

A van full of local produce also goes down to Borough Market, near London Bridge, South London and sells Herdwick, Kendal Rough Fell and local beef to eager, food-conscious urbanites from Thursday to Saturday.

The consumer interest in local produce that fuels such schemes is also now making the big retailers sit up and take notice.

"Supermarkets are starting to have to take notice and take an interest in local produce because people now are looking for it," said Steve, "People are really starting to care about food miles and local produce."

That may be good for the farmers, but it also adds to their workload.

"It is always busy - consumers demand the finished item all year round and to push the business forward we work harder than we used to," said Steve, "My dad might have disagreed, but I can never remember working as hard as we do today."

The marketplace cannot completely dominate the farmer's year though and the cycle of longer summer days and long winter nights still imposes a natural order on agriculture.

Summer brings its own seasonal tasks such as sheep shearing, silaging and of course, the show season, and farmers work later to take advantage of the long days.

Steve said: "It's a hard time of year, but you can get finished by six or seven in the evening and still get a couple of pints in at the pub it is much more sociable."

With autumn comes the crucial livestock sales period where Cumbrian farmers sell young stock for finishing on farms further south and east.

"It's an important time when you try to make a few pounds to put some away for the winter that's coming," explained Steve.

One consolation of winter is that the lack of daylight hours makes the working day shorter, but there is still plenty to do.

Not least that means preparing for spring when the cycle begins again.