Notes from the country with Vicky Turrell

  It is the sameness of it all this winter. Everyday melds quietly into the next. I have been wondering how to make life different in lockdown, to gain a new perspective on things. Then I heard about night walking and thought I would give it a try. People in cities are doing it already. As long as you ‘social distance’ you are fine, and they say that you see things in a new light. Social distancing is no problem for me as I am shielding, and I planned to walk on my own. But at the first attempt I did not get past my front door. There was a frost, and everywhere was too slippery. This week has been milder, so I tried again. I soon found out that I would have been better in town but, of course, I cannot go there. I must stay in our own garden and fields. Here, instead of people, there are rabbit burrows, mole hills, and vole holes to avoid. I stayed on the path and walked round the house. I heard the last call of a blackbird reluctantly leaving its prized bird-table food. I not...

There are lambs’ tails lining the roadsides.   Of course, I mean the pollen catkins, dangling from hazel bushes in the hedgerows. The real lambs with real lambs’ tails are being born now and soon there will be hundreds of them in the fields with their mothers. I remember lambing on our farm. The sheep were brought into the barn and my father stayed up all night and often watched all day too. We used to keep the ram in the field with the ewes and lambing was spread out over quite some time. Once, my father said that he was going to solve this problem with a marvellous new idea. At great cost, the vet came and gave the ewes some hormones so that they were all ready for lambing at the same time. It didn’t work though, and I don’t think that the problem has ever quite been solved. Sheep often have ideas of their own about lambing. Out for a bike ride some years ago, I stopped to look over a gate and watch some new born lambs. They were playing the game ‘I’m the king of the cas...