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Stories from the Bush – Making Paper from Weeds and Flowers from Alpacas

Stories From The Bush – Our Stories are from our community of Spend With Us – Buy From a Bush Business, stories of Australian’s who work and live in Rural and Regional Australia.

Making Paper from Weeds and Flowers from Alpacas

A Spend With Us – Buy From a Bush Business, Business Owner’s Story

 

This week, I’d like you to meet Amee from AM Paperarts. A creative from Northern NSW who’s business idea came from a conversation had around dead camel carcass’. Curious? Take a listen.

This transcript was made by Rev.com – if you’d like to try it yourself click here: try.rev.com/3mmN2z

Transcript:

Jenn Donovan:

Well, hey there and welcome to episode two of Stories From The Bush, a podcast brought to you by spendwithus.com.au. I am of course the host, Jenn Donovan, obsessed with all things marketing, social media and small business in my day job, but now of course obsessed with rural as well. I’m a farmer’s wife, I live in the Riverina of New South Wales, I have three almost adult children, but I’m really passionate about sharing the business and life stories of rural Australia, hence the Stories From The Bush podcast that you’re listening to at the moment. My business partners and I, so Sarah Britz and Lauren Hateley shout out to them, are co-founders of Spend With Us, Buy From a Bush Business.

Jenn Donovan:

So we have an online marketplace which supports of hundreds of small businesses called spendwithus.com.au, but we also have a Facebook group that has over 100… Sorry, not over a 100, over 300,000 members in it and therefore, in that group we are supporting hundreds and thousands of small business owners. If you’d like to hear more about our story and how we actually come to what we’re doing, then head back to the intro episode and hear how us three rural girls have got together to make a big difference in rural and regional Australia. We’d love for you to check out our marketplace, so just go to www.spendwithus.co.au and support rural small business and maybe even recommend us to one of your friends when you find some amazing goodies there.

Jenn Donovan:

The stories I’ve heard, the emails I’ve got, the messages I’ve received are heartwarming and devastating and amazing, but all have this common thread of resilience and community, and it’s these characteristics that have led me to you hearing this series of 10 stories on season one of this podcast. Stories of amazing business owners doing amazing things, stories of friendship, mateship, diversification, and of course, resilience and community. With all my heart I hope you enjoy listening to these stories as much as I loved interviewing these true Australian rural business people. Today on episode two I have with me Amee from AM Paperarts.

Jenn Donovan:

Her story, her business, her resilience, her ability to make something out of seemingly nothing is going to blow you away. From feral camel carcasses, yes carcasses, to grass that’s actually a weed, to alpacas, these were all her inspiration for her businesses that stand today. I told you she could make something out of nothing. Amee is an artist and really takes innovation to new heights and brings her community along with her. I know you’re going to love this story about Amee and her business. With all this in mind, go and garb yourself a cuppa and sit back and listen to episode two. Thank you so much Amee for coming on the podcast today. I really appreciate it and I can’t wait for people to hear your story so welcome.

Amee:

Thanks so much, Jenn. It’s so exciting to be here.

Jenn Donovan:

We’ve had a bit of a talk off air so I’m really, really excited for people to hear a little bit about your story. Can you tell us a little bit about where you live and what your farm looks like?

Amee:

My husband and I have got two properties, one in Tomingley that we live at and another farm at [inaudible 00:03:46]. So we’re out in the Central West, halfway between Dubbo and Parkes. We live on one and we work both farms though. So it’s always a bit of challenge when you’ve got to drive for 30Ks or 40Ks between one farm and another every couple of days to do different things, move things backwards and forwards. So originally I’m from the Northern Territory, from Central Australia and in the last couple of years when I met my husband I’ve been commuting backwards and forwards, still living and working on the Territory station and then when I wasn’t doing that living and working on the properties here.

Amee:

When we got married in October I promised him that I’d live here permanently and just start visiting the Territory. I think the biggest thing for us has been I come from Central Australia where it works in a seven to 10 year rain cycle, so for me, it being dry is the normal thing, having a good year is the exception. So coming here full-time it was kind of the reverse of that. So for me, I’ve actually never seen a good year on our farm, I’ve only ever seen it the way that it is and a year ago my husband said, “I’m glad that you’ve seen it now, this is the worst that it will ever be.” And he was not quite right, we’ve had another 12 months since then where it has actually got worse.

Jenn Donovan:

Wow.

Amee:

So I came in asking a whole lot of questions that he wasn’t prepared for really, “Why are we doing this? Why are we doing this? Why aren’t we doing this? What does this mean? What does this do?” Which was really challenging for him because he’s worked the farm forever and with his dad before that so it was just, “Well, that’s just the way that we do it because that’s the way dad it. That’s the way that we did it.” So for me, it was about why are we doing particular things and how can we do things a little bit differently. It did get worse and just continued to get worse. We have-

Jenn Donovan:

What sort of farm do you have?

Amee:

We have a mixed farm business. Normally we run about 1,400 ewes, 50 odd cattle, and then cropping, but we haven’t had a crop now in more than three years. So we’ve been hand feeding animals, hand feeding animals every day, every second day. We’ve had to halve our animal numbers in order to be able to get them through. A lot of people just go, “Oh well, you work on the farm, why are you not at work in town?” Or any of those things and for us we can’t. I still go and spend weeks out in the Northern Territory helping them and working up there when that needs to happen so I can’t have a job where I’m going, “Oh, can I have this week off, and then this week off, and then these days off.”

Amee:

We’ve got two teenagers daughters as well and Sean has surgery at the end of last year, which put him out of action for 10 weeks. So for 10 weeks, I’m doing my jobs and his jobs and when you’re hand feeding animals every day or every second day, how are you going to do that? You can’t go and just get a job in town. So for us it was about how we can look at things a bit differently, how we can make some changes in our business. And I was coming in with a fresh set of eyes so that we could look at that. And I’m an artist by trade, I’m a paper maker by trade, so it was-

Jenn Donovan:

What’s a paper maker? What does a paper maker do? That sounds very, very fascinating.

Amee:

So I make hand made paper and I make paper out of grass traditionally using the native grasses particularly out in Central Australia, turning those into sheets of paper that you can then use for different things. So as a normal sheet of paper kind of like this one, this one I prepared earlier. So as a normal sheet of paper, or you can turn it into all kinds of different things. What’s really amazing about the process that I go through to make paper is that the paper that I’m using you start from a wet sheet.

Amee:

So if you dry it flat, you get a flat sheet of paper, but if you dry it over a glass or in a ball or in another way that memory becomes permanent. So I can create 3D shapes, sculptures, jewelry, all kinds of things, but without having to use glue or scissors or anything else. It’s actually just using the strength in the grass and in the pulp itself through that process. So I have the privilege of doing something a little bit different that others may not be able to do because they’re not starting from a raw material.

Jenn Donovan:

So where did that idea come from? You’re obviously a very artistic minded person, but where does an idea of something to make paper as a business or even as a hobby come from?

Amee:

You’re not going to believe my answer to that, but the answer to that is feral camels.

Jenn Donovan:

You’re going to have to explain that a little bit more.

Amee:

So out on the property in the Territory, we had issues with feral camels and we had a scientist that came out and they liked using us for research because we kept really good records. So we could take these scientists out to sets of carcasses and know these carcasses are six weeks olds, these are three days old, these are from yesterday. And they were out studying the decomposition rate and the carbon implications, so whether there was potential for carbon credits in camel decomposition essentially.

Jenn Donovan:

Okay.

Amee:

And one of the scientists one day went, “Don’t they make paper out of spinifex grass?” And we went, “I don’t know.” But it was you know how things stick with you?

Jenn Donovan:

Yes.

Amee:

Where my mum and I are going, “Can you? Can you make paper out of spinifex?” Because we have a million acres of spinifex and cattle don’t eat it, what could we do with spinifex? So we Googled it, as you do-

Jenn Donovan:

Yes, as you do.

Amee:

… how to make paper out of Central Australian native grass and the answer was no results. So we bought some books and had a bit of a play around, and in that business, in that farming business at that point it was the fallout from the GFC so there was no tourism and it was the fallout from the live export ban. And even though we never sent animals to live export, all of our beef is domestic beef it flooded the domestic beef market and caused the crash there. So for the first time in my family’s business history, we’ve got two businesses that support each other a tourism business and the cattle business and we lost the bottom out of both. So we were going well my grandfather who’s 92 now, he’s a big believer in you can expect things to happen. If you want something to happen, you have to go and make it happen.

Amee:

So we were going, what can we do? The tourism industry was saying, you need people to stay an hour. How do you get people to stay an hour? They might then buy a drink, they might then buy a meal, they might then choose to stay a night. The cattle industry and the farming industries were all going, how can we tell our stories better? How can we as farmers talk about our relationship with our landscape in a way that is positive? How can we start to show people that we’re not the devil, that the media portrays us to be all of the time, there are actually things that we do that we care about what we’re doing. So when we started to look at the paper making we went well, that’s an opportunity for us to do both things.

Amee:

We could show people how to use the landscape in a different way and make something really beautiful out of it and really constructive and really easy to use and how can we tell our story? We can do that during that process. So we converted an old abattoir building into a paper mill and-

Jenn Donovan:

Oh wow you went [crosstalk 00:12:35]-

Amee:

And run an artist in residence program and all of those things. So my role in that business over the last six, seven years, has been to grow that business, to grow the paper making side of things, to put it out into the art sector. And we did that by not only making paper, but using the paper to make jewelry, being part of the Eco Fashion Week over the last few years, two years. Putting paper made from grass on a runway in an international arena, showing people that you can look at the landscape in a different way and farmers do things a little bit differently. So when I made the decision to marry my soulmate and move to the Central West, then it was always about how I can continue that growth. My own personal growth in the art sector and my business as an artist, but how that will fit inside our new life in our farm here. So the challenge for me-

Jenn Donovan:

So does the paper mill still work in the Northern Territory?

Amee:

Oh yeah.

Jenn Donovan:

Yup? So your mom is still in charge of that and running that?

Amee:

Oh, yes, very much so.

Jenn Donovan:

Yeah. Wow.

Amee:

And then I go back up and run art camps and different things. So I go and spend weeks up there every couple of months to train staff and keep things organized and make sure my mom’s doing the right thing, but don’t tell her I said that.

Jenn Donovan:

No, no I’m sure she won’t listen to this.

Amee:

No, I know. So it’s still very much going and running to us every day and all of those kinds of things, it’s just doing it without me at the moment.

Jenn Donovan:

How does it look? Now you have moved, so you’ve moved to a mixed farm so sheep, cattle, no crop, drought, I’m not quite sure do you have that type of grass where you are now?

Amee:

No, not at all. But I hadn’t seen anybody before that had made paper out of any of the cereal crops. Barley, wheat, sorghum, any of those so I always wanted to try that when I got here, I’m going to try the cereal crops then because that’s what people connect with here. So much of it about is telling the story. If I was trying to sell Central Australian native grass paper here, people don’t connect with that.

Jenn Donovan:

Yeah it’s a disconnect.

Amee:

Whereas if I go I’ve got handmade paper or paper flowers that I’ve made from wheat, or barley, or oats people get that, that’s what they connect to here. So that’s where I wanted to start, but of course it’s my crops so I’ve just kind of come to a bit of a standstill.

Jenn Donovan:

Yes.

Amee:

But I’m not the type of person that can sit still, I’ve got to be doing something and I need that creative outlet. So for me that came in the form of alpacas, meaning from camels to alpacas. Logical route.

Jenn Donovan:

Your four legged creatures are helping win you out, this is a fascinating story. I’m sure people who are listening to this are actually going to have to rewind to go, “Did she really say-”

Amee:

Camels.

Jenn Donovan:

“Camels and did she really say alpacas?” So how have you been using the alpacas now?

Amee:

So alpacas originally started just as herd protectors for our sheep. So we lost a lot of lambs over the last couple of years to foxes and we had heard that alpacas are good herd protectors, we didn’t really know how that worked we just went yep, we’re going to try something and let’s just try that before we start lambing. So we bought a handful of alpacas and saw huge shifts in our lambing percentage. Whether it was purely coincidence we’re never going to know, but none of the lambs that we lost were to dogs or to foxes so we think that they very much did their job. So they came in purely as a business tool for us in that side of things, but then we had to shear them and I knew that alpacas came in lots of different colors and instead of just having plain boring white ones, I decided I wanted a colored male, because then we could have multicolored babies potentially.

Jenn Donovan:

Ah, beautiful.

Amee:

So we went to a breeder in Maggi that’s known for the quality of their fiber. Went well, maybe I can do something with fiber, that would be really interesting. Because I’ve played around with Merino before, but it’s a little bit boring, it only comes in one color. So we went to buy one colored male and came home with five, one colored male and four colored females.

Jenn Donovan:

Okay.

Amee:

But then we were shore them not long after we shore all of our sheep and I had the fibers sitting here. So over the summer when it started to get really hot I well know maybe there is something that I can do with this fiber. And if I can’t make paper, I got no grass to do that maybe I can actually still make jewelry and still design but do that with alpaca, with the alpaca fiber, because I’ve now got all of these beautiful natural colors so I don’t have to do anything that I don’t already do. I just use what mother nature has provided and see it in a different way. So I started to play with the alpaca fiber and just make some earrings and make some necklaces and just continued to go from there.

Jenn Donovan:

So I know part of this podcast is we had met through my group Buy From a Bush Business, but previous to that where were you selling or where did you intend to sell this beautiful jewelry that now you’re making out of something really quite unusual and a little bit mind blowing I have to say Amee of alpaca fibers?

Amee:

Originally well, I wasn’t sure so I just looked at the different markets that were up. I built a website over the last few years and I built it purely as an artist’s CV essentially, but I always had the intention of building a shop into the back. So it was just about starting to load some things into the shop to maybe see what happens. On our farm here we are on the main road, my long term plan is to one day have a gallery space on the farm. That was okay well, I just make some things, see whether I can even do it, I didn’t even know whether it would work and then just go from there.

Amee:

And I’d had a number of people comment that had been watching the Buyfromthebush and Buy From a Bush business groups and the whole movement going, “You should do this. You should do this. You should do this.” I’m going “No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I’m not ready for that.” My husband had just had surgery, we were Christmas and hand feeding and we’d just had a wedding and all of those things I’m going I’m doing his job and my job, I don’t have the mental, the emotional or the physical capacity to even contemplate it. I just want to sit in my own little creative space and just have five minutes of me time and put something together and see if it works.

Jenn Donovan:

Because it was almost your therapy then, wasn’t it?

Amee:

It was.

Jenn Donovan:

It was Amee time despite all the other worries and all the other stresses of family life, farm life and everything, it was almost like your little bit of heaven where it could just be you.

Amee:

Exactly, it was how do you keep your hands busy in your mind still and that for me is how you do it. So it was being able to sit quietly, but still be constructive and still do something. So for me it was my downtime, it was the way that I could relax and just stop for a minute. So I’ve been pushing against the putting anything up on any of those sites or into any of those groups, just going I just need to make sure I’m in the right head space first. And that I’m okay with this first and that my husband’s okay and all of that stuff.

Amee:

So we got through Christmas and I started to make some more things and husband’s going, “Well I can almost go back to work now. I can take some of this pressure off you, we can do some things and we have the two teenage girls at home who are capable of putting a load of washing on the line and do a load of dishes and feed the potty calves and do all of that stuff.” So I just went, you know what? I’m just going to do it, I’m just going to do it and see what happens. So I put the first post up of some alpaca fiber earrings up on Buy From a Bush Business.

Jenn Donovan:

You almost need to repeat that. I’m really sorry, I know it just rolls off your tongue, but alpaca fiber earrings.

Amee:

Alpaca fiber earrings up on Buy From a Bush Business and sold a few. I had some really lovely comments and some really lovely feedback from people and that was a boost in confidence really. And I think that’s what’s so incredible about this platform is as an artist every time you make something and put it out there, you’re putting a little piece of your soul on a fight and there’s always that fear of nobody’s going to like it. And when we’re looking at what our long term plan is for our business, what our long term goals are, how do we want things to look over the next 10 years one of those things is I could spend all this time and all this money on making all of these products and get to the end point and nobody wants them.

Jenn Donovan:

Yes.

Amee:

Whereas being able to put up things in little bits on Buy From a Bush Business gives you almost that instant feedback that is difficult to get in the art sector. A lot of artists find that it’s incredibly difficult to run a profitable sustainable art practice. Most artists have got other jobs and I have another job, I’m a farmer’s wife.

Jenn Donovan:

Yeah and a mom and, and, and.

Amee:

And all of those other things so it’s a way for people to actually make it viable, which I think is really important and that hasn’t been possible before. So for me it was about being able to put some of those little things out there and just see whether people went, “Oh my god, it’s made out of alpaca.” Or they went, “Oh my god! It’s made out of alpaca!” So it was just about seeing how that went and I sold the first few earrings and I was super excited about being able to sell a few pairs of earrings and went okay, well what can I make differently now so my next post is different?

Amee:

So I made different earrings, I made alpaca of all sorts, different colored earrings and put them up and the same thing, had a couple of sales but then I was going what can I do? What can I do? I want people to come and find my business because they want to see what I’ve done now like, “Oh my god, what has she done now? Let’s have a look.” Or to follow my post just to see what’s happening next.

Jenn Donovan:

Yes.

Amee:

So it was I don’t want to put up jewelry again, I don’t want to put up earrings again, what can I put up? So we had the alpaca flowers put up. I made these little pots of alpaca flowers and I made six and I spent the day upgrading my website, updating things, adding them into the shop, doing all these photos and I put them up-

Jenn Donovan:

I was just going to say because this is a podcast the video may… I know we’re talking to each other on video, but if anyone listening to the podcast, so defs hearing the words what’s an alpaca flower? Can you give us a bit of a visual of what that could look like via words?

Amee:

So an alpaca flower is a ball of felted alpaca wool. I can’t think about what it might be the size of, but they’re between three and four centimeters in diameter. So just have a nice little ball and then they’re put on a piece of rusty old wire.

Jenn Donovan:

Okay.

Amee:

So you end up with this lovely little rusty wire stem and then these beautiful natural colored round flower tops.

Jenn Donovan:

Okay.

Amee:

So kind of like the belly buttons, but bigger much bigger than a belly button and colors are natural rather than dyed. So I made the flowerpots with three little flowers in a little glass pot with some of our river sand. I’ve never seen the river sand before, but there’s sand in the bottom of our river. And some of our river sand in the bottom of a glass and I bought six little glass pots and I made six. I thought yep, these are nice and I’ve made them going, “I’m going to be prepared this year and I’m going to think about things in advance rather than the night before so I’ll make these little pots for the markets in January, that’d be lovely.”

Amee:

And then I went maybe I’ll put them up on their website and that could be something that I put up on Buy From a Bush Business rather than the earrings again, for the third week in a row. So I put the six pots up at five o’clock on Friday afternoon because that’s the time it works for me and within minutes I’d sold all six of them on the website. And I was starting to get these messages from people with photos of vases and flower arrangements going, “I have this beautiful vase of with paper flowers in it and I think these alpaca flowers would just fill it out. I’ve always thought it was missing something and I think what it’s missing is alpaca flowers. Would you sell just the stems?” I’m going, I’ve got no idea.

Amee:

So I said to my husband, “These people are asking me whether I’d just sell the stems.” And he went, “Well, can you?” I went, “Well, we can?” He goes, “Well then do it.” So 9:30 at night I’m adding things into the back end of my website trying to work out how to do that and take some photos and go okay, well, we can sell just the flowers as individual stems or in little bunches of five. And then I had people going, “Oh, but I want a pot and it says that they’re all sold out.” So right now you know 10:30 on Friday night and we’re adding in make me one to order flowerpot into the backend of the website and by Sunday afternoon, I was on the phone to my grandmother in Canberra and she said, “Hey, darling, how are you?”

Amee:

I’m like, “Grandma, what are you doing this week?” She’s going, “Why?” “Because I’m now up to 85 orders and I don’t know how I’m going to do it before the end of the week, which is what I’ve promised that I will send all of these out within seven days.” And she went, “Oh darling.” So she came over from Canberra so I had my 77 year old grandmother sitting at the table folding paper and putting stickers on packages and helping me sort out paperwork and all of these things to get them done and get them all sent out to everyone and it’s just rolled on from there really.

Jenn Donovan:

I love this story, I think it’s both hilarious and mind blowing. I would love to know whether you’re 77 year old grandmother had any idea of what she was walking into or any idea of how you could have done what you did.

Amee:

No. And then because by the time she arrived I had something like 130 orders. So she thought she was just coming to 80 and then I remember I took the first box to the post office and as she’s putting stickers on things, she’s handing them back to me so I can type out that number and send the shipping number to that person I’m able to ship and send them the tracking. So I’ve got this process with the post office lady and her name’s Kat and she’s the most amazing patient woman I’ve ever met.

Jenn Donovan:

Yeah, that’s Kat.

Amee:

We’re doing this and I got to the point where I went you hit refresh at the end and watch that pending order number go down and I went, “We’re down to like 85.” And she went, “Oh my god, we still have another 85?” I said, “Yeah.” “Oh, okay.” I went, “I’ll see you tomorrow.” “Okay.”

Jenn Donovan:

All right Amee, this is phenomenal and I guess I don’t want to make this all about the group the Buy From a Bush Business, but clearly it has made a bit of a difference. Without putting you on the spot, share what you would like to share, keep what you would like to keep, but what sort of a difference has something like this made to the farm, to yourself to your own mindset in some way?

Amee:

So many different things. So if we talk purely about numbers to start, I feel like I’ve had 10,000 individual unique use to my website over the last six weeks from that first post. We’ve packed and sent 220 orders. We’ve probably done 1,000 kilometers in trips to and from the post office, but it’s also that wider smaller community. The Land wanted to run a story on me so I found a young photographer from Narromine who is trying to build her business and get her name out. So she dropped everything for me and came and spent a couple hours take photos so I could take everything to the next level essentially, have some professional photography done and do that.

Amee:

We bought hay, we didn’t know how we were going to buy the next load of hay and it was we could go and do that. Fueling the car, I buy a coffee from the coffee shop and take it to the lady in the post office as a bribe [crosstalk 00:32:17]. Our girls needed new school uniforms, and new shoes, and all of those things that we were going, “We don’t know how we’re going to do this. We just don’t know how we’re going to do it.” Being able to get vet care for the dogs and for one of our alpacas who was sick and we weren’t able to do that before. There’s all of those kinds of things that we were able to involve our local community in that flow on effect and do that.

Amee:

From the business side of things, it’s meant that I’ve been able to build a profile in this region that I had no idea how I was going to do that before and do that successfully. And to have people talking about something a bit different and to also talk about that farming story as well that no, there is hope during dry times and there is the ability to look at things a little bit differently and maybe utilize what you have on farm in a slightly different way. Sometimes it’s just about looking at things a little bit differently to change, or improve or to grow. But personally for me, it’s given me a place, I’ve always been incredibly independent going from the family business where I very much knew my place into business with my husband, where I didn’t know what I did.

Amee:

Now he’s saying, “Well, what do you want to do today?” I’m going, “I don’t know, what do we do? What do I do here? What’s my place here? What’s my role here? I don’t know, I need you to tell me.” So I was quite lost for a little while just trying to figure out where I was and I didn’t know anybody.

Jenn Donovan:

Now, you’re famous.

Amee:

Now I’m good friends with Kat at the post office and the lady that makes coffee. This has given me the opportunity to go and talk to some people and just find my place in our family business. So yeah, that’s been really important.

Jenn Donovan:

Yeah. And look, I think there is just so many… I know this is your personal story, but there’s so many business lessons in there for other business owners as well. Like some of the things you’ve said about listening to your market and doing some testing at the start rather than just going out and making all this jewelry, or all the paper or whatever you were going to do. You tested it first, you saw that there was a market for it, but also listening and wanting to always improve, they’re really valuable lessons for other business owners. And for me the hugest one is no thought is too bizarre, you make paper out of spinifex and you make jewelry out of alpacas. If anyone has a thought in between those two things then it just could work.

Amee:

Exactly. Exactly. I’ve always involved all of the family, my girls are very much involved, my husband’s very much involved out on the farm or the station in the Territory as well. I’d be going into an art exhibition and I’d go to the boys down in the sheds like, “I need this thing this big, this wide, can you weld this to this, and I’ll go and find some stuff from down behind the shed and I want you to put it together.” And they’re just like, “For what?” And I’m like, “Well, it’s going to be a this.” And they go, “Aha, okay.” But then they do it and they just nod and smile and go, “She’s up to something really ridiculous again.” And I do it almost every day to my husband.

Amee:

He is really, “What are we doing? What am I doing this for? What is this going to be?” But then he welds it up and carries it around and puts it where I want it to get put and he goes, “Ah, okay. Right, I get it now.” So I think sometimes it’s just those crazy ideas that really can make a big difference I guess.

Jenn Donovan:

Yeah.

Amee:

You just got to be not too afraid of it.

Jenn Donovan:

Absolutely. It’s been an amazing chat to you Amee, both the recorded podcast and the pre-podcast where I got to have a little bit of chat to you as well which is a little bit selfish on my part for anyone who’s listening now. But is there anything else just before we sign off that you wanted to share with us about your journey or just any last pieces of wisdom for people who might be listening?

Amee:

No I think Jen the biggest thing really is it’s always going to be tough.

Jenn Donovan:

Yeah.

Amee:

There’s always going to be challenges, there’s always going to be bad days, there’s always going to be that thing that is the icing on the cake that you just burst into tears for when it was such a little thing, but it wasn’t actually that little thing it was the six other things before that.

Jenn Donovan:

Yeah.

Amee:

And then the one stupid thing is the one that sets you off and makes your husband go, “Oh, my God, what is wrong with you?” And I think there’s always going to be that and life on the land isn’t easy, it is tough, but there are reasons why we’ve chosen to do it, and it’s also really remarkable and really incredible at the same time. So sometimes it’s just about remembering that, but also about remembering that there is the ability to look at things differently and there is always the ability to think outside the box. And if you’re not capable of thinking outside the box then go and have coffee with somebody who is or just bounce some ideas off because there’s always another way. There’s always an alternative, there’s always an option and I think sometimes we forget that.

Jenn Donovan:

Yeah, absolutely. Beautiful, wise, wise words for sure. I think remarkable and incredible are definitely two words to describe both your journey, but also living on the land it is. And I’m hoping that this series of podcasts interviews will really shine a light on that for people who either don’t live rurally or live in cities of how remarkable and incredible it actually is to be part of the big, wide brown landscape that we actually have.

Jenn Donovan:

Amee, for anyone who’s been listening and A, wants to learn a little bit more about the paper business and mill that you’ve got going in Northern Territory and also about what your business is now and your jewelry and your website, where can people get in contact? Where can they get in contact and what do they need to Google to find you?

Amee:

Oh, they just need to go and Buy From a Bush Business Jen, come on.

Jenn Donovan:

Oh, Beautiful [inaudible 00:39:39]. Thank you.

Amee:

So everything is on the website AM Paperarts. So AM paperarts or @ampaperarts on Facebook and Instagram and the website as well. Everything’s on there.

Jenn Donovan:

Is it .com.au or just.com?

Amee:

Just .com, ampaperart.com. All of the alpaca stuff is there, all the paper stuff is there, the story and the journey and where we’re at now all of those things that are on the website.

Jenn Donovan:

Yeah. And anything else that you come up between now and when this goes live will no doubt proceed in there as well.

Amee:

Exactly will be there too.

Jenn Donovan:

Beautiful. Amee I cannot thank you enough for being so open, so honest and sharing this journey with anyone who’s listening because I think that I love the idea of people thinking about diversification, but I also love the idea that the platform is giving artists like yourself or even just small business owners like yourself some extra income.

Amee:

Yes, absolutely. You’ve done a remarkable job.

Jenn Donovan:

Look, I only provided the platform, all the fantastic purchases and all those beautiful people that take time to either purchase or comment there are just making the platform a dream. It’s unbelievable.

Amee:

Yeah.

Jenn Donovan:

All right. Thank you so much Amee, no doubt we will talk again really soon.

Amee:

Sounds good.

Jenn Donovan:

How was that? That was fascinating, wasn’t it? Oh, my goodness I think the moral of this story is if you have a dream for a business that sits anywhere between feral camels, and alpacas and grass that’s a weed, I would really encourage you to give your dream a go. Anything in between that my goodness, it can actually work with passion and commitment. I’ve found in my Buy From a Bush Business group there is so much talent, so much diversity, innovation and brands and I really think that Amee just highlighted and wrapped that all up in a big bow for us today. I can’t thank you enough for listening in to season one, episode two. I’d love you to join me for episode three where we’ll be chatting to another fabulous rural business owner, who is challenging what it means to own a bricks and mortar retail store in a drought affected rural town in New South Wales.

Jenn Donovan:

Thanks again for listening in, make sure you go and check out our marketplace www.spendwithus.com.au, or of course the Facebook group Buy From a Bush Business which you will find just by searching on Facebook. I can’t wait to chat to you on the next episode with another super amazing guest.

 

Through droughts, floods, bushfires, and Covid19 – these are the stories of our Spend With Us – Buy From a Bush Business community.

Haven’t checked out our online marketplace as yet? Click here to shop now and show your support for rural and regional small businesses by buying directly from them.

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