Emma Smalley and Terry Barlow had already led eventful lives before they began adopting alpacas and llamas.

A designer, illustrator and writer from Manchester, Emma originally had a shop in the city selling her own gift products as well as her three children’s books and met partner Terry - a former intelligence officer, tank commander and marksman in the King’s Regiment - at a craft market while he was working on security.

The couple moved to the Lake District to run their shop and tearoom named Temporary Measure in Keswick, before having a life-changing encounter of the fluffy kind nearly 10 years ago.

"We were doing a craft fair and there were some alpacas at the show and Terry was like, ‘I can't stop thinking about these animals,’” remembers Emma.

“Once he gets things in his head he just obsesses about them until they seem to manifest in the universe. He said, ‘We'll just put an advert in the paper and see if anybody's got any alpacas they can't look after anymore.’ Somebody got in touch and said they had five. We didn’t have time, we didn’t have land, we didn’t have any kind of knowledge but that never stopped us before. So we just decided to do it anyway and then learn very, very quickly.”

They took on more and more llamas and alpacas, starting their business Alpacaly Ever After CIC in 2017, rehoming animals from all over the country which their owners were unable to look after and taking people on alpaca walks and ‘meet and greets’.

They began running it as a social enterprise on a relatively small scale but it gradually grew and grew to the point where they now have 200 rehomed animals. “Llamas are very clever, they’re like big dogs,” says Emma.  “Alpacas are cute and fluffy, especially when they’re little. So sometimes people over-handle them which can make them over-confident as they get older and lead to behavioural problems, and you don’t want to have to wrestle a llama.

"Often they come to us because people’s circumstances change through ill health or change of lifestyle." Up until 2022 they used four locations around the county - the Lingholm Estate, near Keswick, Whinlatter Forest, Littletown Farm, in the Newlands Valley, and Lakes Distillery, near Bassenthwaite - to keep the animals and run activities.

However, 18 months ago they teamed up with David Seymour, owner of the Lingholm Estate, to buy the 155-acre Basecamp North Lakes site just off the A66 between Keswick and Penrith, overlooked by Great Mell Fell.

The site came with a farm shop and cafe, fishing lake, industrial space, 15 staff and dining area, although the land and buildings were badly in need of renovation and repair.

Emma and Terry have been busy investing around £600,000 into upgrading and improving the site, including putting in place infrastructure to make it more accessible, as well as basic but vital developments such as a new sewage treatment plant.

They are also in the process of revamping the kitchen and welfare facilities for staff and have also been granted planning permission for a small extension to the farm shop.

"We have been focusing on turning around the farm shop so that everything in there is local products and the best quality, so we're showcasing the amazing things that you can buy in Cumbria,” says Emma.

​​"We feel like we've made it a welcoming place for lots and lots of different kinds of people.

"We extended the offerings to vegetarians or vegans and people who want to be gluten free, whereas previously it was a meat eater’s paradise only.”

However, the shop still includes a butchery counter, stocked with meat from local farms bought directly where possible so customers can be confident of the high welfare standards of Cumbrian and UK farmers.  They have also entered into a Mid-Tier Stewardship Scheme, restoring existing hedgerows and planting more, as well as beginning work to create a wetland and planting 500 trees. They have also been working with the Green Enterprise Hub, led by Cumbria Action for Sustainability, to put in place carbon saving measures including an 80kw solar panel array which they are using as a demonstration site to inspire other businesses.

A newly appointed volunteer coordinator is also working with them to organise a team of volunteers to grow produce in a community garden, which will be sold through the farm shop. All their hard work is paying off, with the footfall rising from a maximum of 60 covers per day in the cafe to 200 and the site now employs about 30 people.

On any given day Basecamp will host visitors to its cafe and shop, people taking part in activities with the llamas and alpacas, school visits and volunteers working in the community garden. Throughout Emma and Terry have stuck to their original mission of using proceeds from visitors to allow them to provide alpaca and llama experiences to benefit people via charities such as Eden Valley Hospice or Friends of Chernobyl’s Children and many more.

“I have always loved the idea of social enterprise and running a business that is doing good at the same time,” says Emma. “We were really lucky that David was willing to invest in this place with us.”

Although it still works with the external locations to organise activities and home some of the animals, Emma says having their own dedicated site comes with many advantages, including the capacity to welcome larger groups.

“It's a wonderful arrangement working with those other businesses because we get to benefit from their infrastructure, car parks, cafes, and then they benefit from us bringing extra people to the site,” says Emma. “But at the same time, it's absolutely delightful to have somewhere where we've got our own land and our own barns. We've made hay for the first time in two years and it was so exciting to be able to make our own fodder for the animals.”

Terry and Emma have recently bought 100 chickens to add into the mix and produce eggs to sell from the shop.

They are also looking into the potential to grow mushrooms in shipping containers and fresh fruit in greenhouses using hydroponics. "We know it's not traditional farming. We never pretend to be traditional farmers,” says Emma.  “There's enough people in this county that know exactly what to do when it comes to farming. So what we're trying to do here on this site is champion those businesses, and that's what we're concentrating on the farm shop is making sure we're selling from local suppliers. We know we're a very strange niche business, but it works for us and I think we're a really good example of an innovative rural enterprise that is using the land and using the landscape in an untraditional and, we hope, forward thinking way.

"There's a lot going on. But we do like to say if you want something done give it to busy people. We're very, very lucky that we've managed to find somebody that wants to invest with us. So we want to make sure that we're doing our best and this site is going to be amazing.”