THE chill breeze of the past week stopped the slow march of spring in its tracks - but there's optimism in the air now that Easter's here.

The first bank holiday of the year - OK, let's forget New Year's Day - promises better weather to come and let's hope the summer is a good one.

The lambs have been gambolling in the fields for a good few weeks now and, apart from that freak couple of days in the middle of February when the snow came and reminded everyone the season was actually winter, lambing has passed off fairly peacefully in this part of the world.

Easter lambs and Easter chicks always used to be the harbingers of spring, although when you can get strawberries in the shops in December and mince pies in June, the traditional seasonal markers have been knocked rather askew. Which I, personally, reckon is a shame. Do you really need strawberries at Christmas? It takes the magic of summer away.

Fortunately, the sight of gangs of delinquent lambs dashing across from page 17 meadows, jumping in the air and clambering on top of anything they can find, while their mothers graze quietly nearby, is still one reserved for this time of the year.

A drive through the Worcestershire countryside this weekend should provide plenty of entertainment for the lamb watchers.

But it's not only the sheep farmers who will be on the good foot today.

If you see a farmer smiling on your travels, the chances are he will have a herd of milking cows.

That's right, a happy herdsman. There's been precious little to cheer up dairy farmers in recent years and they've been leaving the business in droves as the supermarket giants have squeezed the farm gate price of milk until many of the small operators found it just not financially viable to carry on.

But now, almost out of the blue, comes an announcement by Tesco that it is to pay its milk farmers an extra 4p a litre, which at the new price of 22p a litre is the highest paid by any retailer. Currently, the best is M&S's 21.63p a litre.

Rivals have dismissed the promise as a tactical business move connected to the current Competition Commission inquiry, but Tesco has denied this.

However, it admits the deal will cost it £25m a year - as it intends to keep its shelf price for milk unchanged - and this begs the question, if it can afford to cut £25m from its milk profits, how much was it making from the industry before?

Nevertheless, the hard-pressed dairy industry, which sees 17 farmers quit every week, is grateful for any small mercy.

"Perhaps the one big surprise is that Tesco hasn't done something like this before," said Mark Robinson, who runs a 115-strong herd of milking Holsteins at Spetchley, just outside Worcester.

"The supermarket has always been very good on its PR side and can obviously afford it. What I would have liked to have seen is a more sustainable rise based on an increase in the shelf price for milk, because I think the public would accept that.

"What might not be apparent is the extra 4p a litre will only be paid on liquid milk sales (the milk that goes into a bottle) and this only makes up part of a farm's total milk production. Usually between 40-60 per cent. The rest goes into cheese and yoghurt.

"I usually produce about one million gallons of milk a year from the cows here and if I received an extra 4p a litre I could just about manage to run the dairy operation at a profit. As it is, I'm making a loss. Fortunately that's not all we do on this farm."