Notes from the country with Vicky Turrell

  Have you seen your first swallow yet? I know one swallow does not make a summer, but it does make the warmer weather seem nearer. There have been several reports of sightings in Shropshire this year, but I have not seen mine yet. We always had swallows nesting in our old cow shed. There is a stable door – the type that splits in half. In April we leave the top part open for the swallows. Sadly, they have not nested there in the past few years. I still watch out for them, though, and love to see them chatting away on the overhead electricity wires. Another sign that the weather is getting warmer, at our house, is when there are no more potatoes chitting under the bed. About half of them have been planted so far, but I can still see three egg trays full of sprouting tubers under the guest bed. It is a good job that no one is allowed to stay at present. They would not take kindly to such ugly things lurking under there. Thinking of potatoes, we have run out of them, apart from...

I have a supermarket delivery slot! Not that unusual normally, but today in these strange times it is exciting news. I have told all my friends around Shropshire and beyond. We have an old pasting table at the gate and the delivery man puts the shopping on there. I open the bedroom window and we communicate about substitutions. My order has become a big event, now I am in isolation. These slots, as you will know, are as rare as hens’ teeth, nowadays. Hens really do have teeth when they are ready to hatch out of the egg. The developing chick grows a temporary protuberance on the top of its beak, which it uses to break the eggshell. I recall seeing these ‘teeth’ on day old chicks, when I was a little girl living on a farm. The chicks were delivered by rail in hexagonal cardboard boxes. I remember taking the lid off the boxes and seeing these yellow fluffy creatures with pink legs and beaks with the little protuberances that had helped them hatch. The baby blackbirds in my b...