Here in Wales, it's been so cold for so long that we have given up talking about it

In the Black Mountains, preparations for spring are still on hold
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Lambs are dying of cold and lack of food
Lambs are dying of cold and lack of food Photograph: Dave Thompson/PA

The last of the snow is stubbornly refusing to melt in the Black Mountains. Where it drifted on to the lanes weeks ago, great white limpets still cling to the sod banks. In the fields, fugitive strips of white hide in the lee of the hedges. Higher up on the moors, patches of snow pick out every crevice and indentation in the land. Across the Usk valley, the north-facing glacial cirques that make up the distinctive skyline of the Brecon Beacons are white, alpine and fearsome.

It has been a long winter, not that anyone is talking about it in my local. Usually, meteorological banter is as fluid as rap about rugby in Wales, but when it snowed, the wind turned mean and the cold settled in again on 17 March, all conversation about the weather dried up. People have had enough. "I'm picking up three or four dead lambs each morning," Mark Morgan, a sheep farmer in the Llanthony Valley said on Saturday. "Normally, I'd expect to lose 10 in total, but 40 have died this winter and there'll be more. They say it hasn't been this bad since 1962. The biggest thing is the grass isn't growing, and the ewes can't get enough feed to provide milk for two lambs."

The grass starts growing in spring when the soil temperature reaches around 6C (43F). Night frosts and stuttering, single-digit daytime temperatures mean this is some way off.

"Meanwhile, I have to keep buying feed," Morgan said. "The price has gone through the roof because of the poor summer last year. Add this to £5,000-plus of lambs that I've lost and you see why some farmers are wondering if they should still be keeping sheep. And we haven't even had it that bad here. The snow's been worse in Cumbria, Shropshire and across North Wales."

Historically, snow in March and April is common enough. Statistically, there is a higher chance of a white Easter than a white Christmas.

On this day in 1461, the bloodiest battle ever fought on British soil took place at Towton, Yorkshire, in a blinding snowstorm and there have been major April snowfalls in 1908, 1919, 1950 and 1981. Rarely, though, has the cold continued so hard for so long. As HE Bates noted: "An odd but delightful characteristic of British weather is that the seasons borrow complete days from one another."

This spring, we seem to have borrowed a complete month from winter. As a cyclist, I measure the cold in how far I can pedal every day before the misery of numb hands and cracked cheeks drives me home – currently about 25 miles. My firewood pile, which I thought might last two winters, is down to a handful of logs. I'm still writing cheques to the oil supplier. I can't get a fork into the vegetable patch. The oak trees I should have planted weeks ago are still in plastic trays.

Like it or not, we are emotionally and physically synchronised to the seasons. It's part of the British condition. When winter fails to turn in timely fashion to spring, there is a sense of national dislocation. On Saturday there was a hint of change. The east wind dropped and in the sunshine the temperature reached 10C. Cyclists were out en masse. Paragliders took to the sky above the Blorenge. The high street in Abergavenny was humming with happy faces. It felt like a truce had been declared. Finally, spring is nigh.

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