And, lucky me, I spent most of the day immersed in the sunshine reflecting off the green lamb-filled fields at Glenn Chass.

There were some tough moments too though - such as castrating a newborn lamb.

When I arrived at the dairy on Truggan Road at 6.45am I had no idea what the long day would throw at me.

But thankfully I was greeted by a big Manx smile from long-time farmers Derek Cain and his father-in-law Tom Qualtrough who come from a long line of farmers embedded in the Island's history.

The first thing I was faced with was wiping cows teets and attaching the suction cups to start the milking process.

Derek and Tom do this twice a day every day of the year for 85cows.
It felt strange putting a machine on their udders to pump the milk but I was assured that if the milk is not removed the cow can be in discomfort.

And they were all happily munching on feed to be bothered by the process anyway.

I had a go at squeezing a teet with my hand but after several attempts I was told to be more aggressive.

I timidly obeyed and a little bit of milk squirted out. But it took a while before I repeated that success.

There is a knack to it apparently!

You don't really notice how huge cows are until you stand next to one - or have one poo on your shoulder.

So I was pleased to go and feed the small young calves.

I thoroughly enjoyed this - until I was told to put my fingers in a calf's mouth for it to suck on.

This, apparently, is done to encourage a baby to drink the milk in the bucket.

It may sound like quite a cute thing to do - but it really isn't.

It's slimy, bristly and hot - and you have to trust the fact they don't have teeth yet!

At about 9am, breakfast was served in a lovely bustling farm kitchen by Derek's wife Jane, a music secretary at King William's College.

We all piled round the wooden table and for the first time in my life I poured fresh warm milk onto my cornflakes.

With the cows happily milked, we then attended to the 300 ewes and 450 lambs.

My first job was to bottle feed a lamb which had hurt its shoulder in birth.

I had no problem with this job, infact, as my maternal instincts really kicked in, I could have sat with the little fella all day.

I spent most of the morning in the barn, feeding new lambs and their tired mothers.

Any ewes with only one lamb become foster mums to lambs whose own mother either rejected them or had triplets.

But getting the lamb and foster mother to take to each other can be tricky work.

I sat at the lunch table with wet, sticky, smelly hair trying not to think about what was in it.

Again the whole family congregated and, though I was just a guest for the day, I felt quite at home listening to their jokes about the annual Young Farmers' Concert and their concerns about the future of farming.

In the afternoon I jumped on the back of the quad bike driven by Derek's brother Dave to head up to the fields.

When he said we would be castrating lambs I suddenly felt a bit sick.

Lambs are castrated so they grow with less male traits which apparently degrades the meat.

The tails are also lopped off for hygiene reasons.

When we stopped at the first pair of lambs I was relieved they were girls.

To remove their tails, a rubber band is placed tightly at the top cutting off the blood - it eventually just falls off.

This didn't seem so bad but when we found our first boy I had visions of Dave taking out a scalpel and scissors, something which made me turn a bit white.

I was relieved to be told the testicles are removed in the same way as the tail - the only equipment being an elastic band.

After watching Dave do a few castrations I plucked up the courage to have a go myself.

It went fine until the tool which places the rubber band on got caught and I was told to just pull harder.

Needless to say I was glad when it was over and declined to do it again.

The sore little lamb, I was told, would be over his ordeal in an hour or two.

Thinking this was going to be the highlight of the day, I was not prepared when minutes later I was holding the head of a sheep in labour.

While patrolling the field we came across a ewe in labour with a lamb's head sticking out.

The baby was not moving and it's tongue was hanging out of its mouth so my heart sank.

But after Dave caught up with the sheep he pulled it out and placed it on the grass next to me while I held the mother.

After a brisk rub it suddenly came to life.

I looked at it in amazement but our attention was pulled away when Dave felt another lamb inside the ewe.

It was stuck.

I stopped with a fright when he joked that the job required a smaller pair of hands.

I was quite happy being in charge of the head end.

A few minutes later a second smaller lamb was lying next to its sibling in a messy puddle next to me.

Both were fine and healthy.

My experience was topped off when I was allowed to drive the quad bike back down to the farm.

I left Glendown at 6.30pm having spent 12 hours with a genuinely close team who live and work together to keep their precious Manx farm alive.

I was tired and a little sunburnt but wholly satisfied.

May the farm thrive for generations to come.

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