SLOWLY and steadily, a snail farm in the Upper South East is producing benefits for community members.
The Coonalpyn-based operation is run by Careship Coorong – an award-winning charity that supports people with Alzheimer’s disease.
Founding member Claudia Ait-Touati said the idea came after her father was diagnosed with dementia a decade ago.
“He was an outdoor person and as we went overseas to find a place for him, we found the concept of a care farm,” she said. “What it did for my dad made me realise we need something like it in Australia.”
Claudia said the idea of snails originally began as a joke while she worked at the Coonalpyn silos. Then she realised it was the perfect match for a care farm.
She said the project was labour intensive, with no major machinery costs, but also worked as a symbol of the need to slow down.
Once the idea was in-hand, she said it still took a while to put in place.
“My husband and I started talking about it in 2008, then it took a few years to set up the charity in 2011,” she said.
“It was such a different concept, it took time to get heads around it.”
The site has 15 farm helpers from the local community, as well as 15 volunteers. A recent grant has also resulted in a project officer being employed. Claudia said there were plans to have people from the city come for day trips to Coonalpyn to take advantage of the scheme.
She said there were no people diagnosed with Alzheimers involved at this stage, but the project had many benefits in social interaction as well. She said many of those involved had a connection to agriculture.
“This is different from the farming they’re used to, but it’s still being outdoors and being on the land,” she said.
Volunteers have established several beds with vegetables grown – broccoli is particularly popular – then common brown snails were collected to build up the population. Claudia said they had seen a big boom in numbers from breeding.
“They can be quite temperamental,” she said. “If they’re not happy they don’t breed, but if they are happy, like these are, they breed like rabbits.”
The daily tasks involve weeding pathways outside the beds, watching for other pests, including white snails, rats and mice, and supplementary feeding of grain and milk. Claudia said they were still about a year off the first harvest, and they had not yet established the market paths.
“We’re hoping to tap into the SA restaurants and caterers,” she said.
Snails are a staple dish in French, Spanish and Greek cuisine, and at the moment there is a reliance on tinned escargot.