soup, pastie and coffee? (Paul)

Evening all,

Debbie is yawning her head off to I'm going to publish a few words on the blog tonight otherwise we get text messages of 'wheres the blog??!!'.

Today was an early start - like so many Barnacre mornings! I thought I'd let Debbe wake up first (at about 5am) for a change, regular blog readers know that I'm often up first and bring her a cup of tea to bed, but today she just beat me by an hour or so.

We were off to Morpeth farmers market, a favourite of ours and despite a -2 degrees start to the day and very icy roads, we made it there and set up in good time.  The morning weather wasn't the best, it was cold and drizzling with rain, but the alpaca watchers were soon out in force and new and regular Barnacre Alpaca customers were soon packing the market to our fellow traders delight and Michael, the market manager who always makes us very welcome.

This year's regular trio of Minimus, Niveous and Seymour were as good as ever.  It always brings a smile to my face when I get asked (every 10 minutes or so) 'why are your alpacas so friendly?' - ha ah!

Thanks to everyone who came to see the alpaca, us and the knitwear.  We had another really good day and I suspect we are going to sell out of everything, again, before we get to Christmas.  So if there's something in our online shop that you have your eye on you'd better buy it, email or phone us quick!  A newish face on the market was a good friend of mine, Louise and her (nearly) able chaperone, Colin who sensibly invested in a new Barnacre Alpaca beanie!  Louise makes brilliant hand made cards so if you need one for a special birthday or christmas, please drop us a line and we will put you in touch.

Debbie and I also spoke to several people who are considering the alpaca dream.  Can you believe it is nearly 6 years since we got our first 3 alpacas - what a change from the cat we had at the time!  We have learnt so much along the way and we know how difficult it was to get good advice in our early days.  This is something Debbie and I are very passionate about sharing.   Alpacas and owning them is brilliant, so is good honest advice.

Seymour had some very special visitors today at Morpeth market, his new owners! So if you had your eye on a promising black stud male then sorry, but you are too late!  More details to be revealed in due course!

As for the title, a special thanks to Pat for the soup, Carol for the pastie (and more knitwear) and Dan for the coffee. It was a very cold day and I'm glad I had my alpaca hat on, and equally glad for the warm things that these kind people bought me.

Right, I have a bit of paperwork to do and then it's time to hit the sack myself.  Now shall I wake up first or second in the morning...

Night all. Paul