Keith Brennan The ripple of birdsong has spread from the far valley and broken across the farm. If spring moves at a walking pace then perhaps the birdsong walks with it. Where we are, with the farm backed up against Hawthorn Hill, facing north, it sometimes walks a little slower still. Across the hill and down the valley, where the farms face into the sun, the birds arrived last week. These fields fringed three rows deep with hazel and willow. The spruce forest spends itself finally, after a hundred acres of quiet, dense, commercial tree farm, giving way to the cattle-farmed hills. Rolling open fields fringed with native trees. Cattle…