Our first Christmas Market was a resounding success. We were so lucky with the weather, What with the builders and the bad weather we were way behind with the preparations but son, David, came to the rescue on Friday and really pulled out all the stops to help us with the many last minute jobs that looked small on paper but turned out to be very time consuming when we came to do them. He came up with some excellent ideas for making everything more attractive and safer for the visitors and helped us put them into practice. Big thank you to David, even though he could not attend the actual event.
The rest of the clan, including all our relations in Bristol and Mike's family from Salisbury came along. Pam and her cousin, Jill ran my stall all day whilst I was busy trouble shooting and sorting out the usual little problems that arise. Originally I asked Pam if she would relieve me from time to time, but actually apart from selling a few raffle tickets, Pam and Jill did all the work with an hour or two's help from my lovely friend, another Pam, who lives nearby. She would willingly have stayed longer, but had her own family commitments.
A big thank you to her for knitting lots of Beanie Hats and mittens in time for the market. She is creative and such a good friend.
Next time we will try to get hold of one of those click counters so we have an idea of how many visitors we actually had.
We had and "Animal Corner" with a few alpaca cria, the Gotland Sheep,some Angora goat kids and a few hens. As a result we have quite a few people interested in buying and we have acquired a new young cockerell to romance our hens.
We used the living room to be of our new house for the overflow and my friend's son and his band played a few sessions of music throughout the day which added a festive spirit.
Many of the stallholders asked if we would be holding more events, although a few did not do quite as well.
The catering was great with home made soup, lovely fresh rolls and delicious spiced apple hot toddy. It was very popular all day, but if we do any more events, I will make sure that the refreshments are available earlier as the stallholders were looking for breakfast before their long stint on the market.
We had a bit of a problem getting the goat kids to leave their mums, even though they have been weaned for a long time. Even Dolly, the sheepdog, could not get them to come. In the end Mike and I went up with the landrover and put three of them in the back and drove them down. I was very pleased with the way all the animals in "Animal Corner" behaved. None of them backed off from the visitors. The Gotland sheep and alpacas really seemed to enjoy the company and the goats and chickens were so busy eating they did not even notice. Definitely no stress to the animals involved in this event.
The dogs were a bit barky to start with as they were in the garden with only a hurdle fence between them and the visitors but after a while they got bored and just continued with their normal doggy pursuits in the garden.
No comments:
Post a Comment