Is all publicity good publicity?

I am always conscious that whenever you put yourself 'out there' i.e promote yourself... you also increase the risk of 'egg on face'. Keep you head down...no omelets...but no business. I had been a little worried about how the article in The Cumberland News would portray us (I didn't get to proof) but it was published on Friday and it was all good stuff. A double page spread with some lovely photos. Ideal publicity the day before the Cumberland Show; where we were taking some of our alpacas. So where does the egg come in?

Robyn, Craig and I set off on Saturday morning in the Beck Brow van. In the village we were being congratulated on the article as people recognised me from the photos and saw our name on the van. Some of you may recall that it is hard to miss the Beck Brow logo and alpacas all over our van...hence it was rather embarrassing when it decided to breakdown on route..not completely...no we managed to crawl up hills between 10 and 20 miles per hour...there was a point that we were going so slow that the alpacas obviously thought that we had stopped... as we could feel them stand up in the back! The queue of traffic to the show field was growing. Was I a tad annoyed?...I will let you guess.

However we did have a successful day despite the torrential rain. We were at least inside a Marquee (with Greenside Alpacas) so the the alpacas, us, and the public could keep dry. Amazingly we did manage to leave the show field without being towed...the fact that the turbo had cut out and hence the lack of power to cause wheel spin, worked to our advantage...see always glass half full!



Parisien (fawn)... seen here with Pepsi (brown)... was our star at the Cumberland Show (I think the eyes have it!)

However, the van problem did mean that we had to take the trailer on Sunday when St Patrick was mobile mating. I am now waiting for the garage to sort out getting the van in for repair, as we have another busy weekend ahead. We are atttending Penrith Agricultural Show on Saturday and have more mobile matings on Sunday. We have now decided to hold off taking any more mobile mating bookings in addition to those already booked (unless very local) in order to be able to provide the best service both to the females that we have booked in and to our own girls (we give our boys at least 2 days off prior to mobile matings).


Explorer is still a little down, still missing Lucie, but is getting bettter. It is a shame that the 2 wethers, whom we have introduced as his 'friends' just ignore him. I am not going to tell him that we have decided to mate Lucie with St. Patrick. We are always undecided about when to mate maidens, but Lucie is well grown and very mature, whereas Roma (seen in the photo below) is smaller and still very much acts like a cria at times. So Lucie will get mated at 14 months of age, all the other 2010 females will wait until next spring.

Roma (foreground), Willow and Lucie