Victorian woman aims to grow 300,000 snails for restaurants
Growing up in France, Coralie Schaff often went snail hunting with her father and siblings.
She now does the same thing with her six-year-old son in Victoria's Otway Ranges.
But instead of covering the snails they find in garlic butter, she adds them into a custom-made pen that 3,000 other snails already call home.
"I want to grow the pens to be able to, at capacity, have close to 300,000 snails," Ms Schaff said.
She has set out to start a commercial snail farm, which, according to her research, will be the only one of its kind in Australia.
"As of today, all of the snails eaten in Australia are imported, so there is a market that we can fill," Ms Schaff said.
Coralie Schaff’s neighbours collect snails from their garden and offer them to her. (ABC South West Victoria: Tamsyn Buckle)
The idea came about after she and her husband purchased 21 hectares of land in the green hills of Beech Forest.
Looking for a unique way to utilise the property, she went to France in April last year to visit some snail farms and was convinced it was a viable option.
"I really enjoyed it and so I came back and I was like, 'This is what I want to do,'" she said.
Delayed by an unseasonably cold summer and a black slug invasion, her snails started breeding early this year.
"All of a sudden I had lots of … eggs. I had lots of babies and I'm like, 'Yes, yes, yes,'"
she said.
Ms Schaff plans to eventually sell to local restaurants, go to French festivals in Geelong, and create a farmgate experience where visitors can stop by and enjoy a snail or two.
But the first step is building up her snail numbers before she can start selling them.
Going between her home in Geelong and her new endeavour, she spends her time at the farm collecting buckets of garden snails from neighbours, perfecting her feeding methods and ensuring birds do not get into her carefully constructed pen.
Mesh covers the snail pens on Coralie Schaff's farm to protect the snails from birds. (ABC South West Victoria: Tamsyn Buckle)
Snails prefer moderate temperatures and lots of rainfall, making the Otways an ideal location.
"It's very similar to the climate in France where a lot of the snail farms are," she said.
Not the first
Ms Schaff is not the first person to notice how well-suited the area is to the niche type of agriculture.
A road-side sign would welcome visitors to Simpson Snails. (Supplied: The Bawden Crew)
Helene Hawes started a snail farm with her husband in Simpson in 2014, about an hour's drive from Ms Schaff's farm.
"Simpson is slap bang in the middle of dairy country, so it's lovely rolling green hills and good rainfall," Ms Hawes said.
The couple moved from Queensland to start Simpson Snails, and before long were selling snails to restaurants and welcoming tourist buses to their farm.
But keeping up with demand from restaurants in Melbourne ordering 1,500 snails a week became more than they bargained for.
"I said to my husband, 'Look, we're going to have to employ people. I'm going to have to be sitting behind a computer,'" she said.
Helene Hawes closed Simpson Snails in 2017 to relocate back to Queensland. (Supplied: Helene Hawes)
"That's not what we did this for."
The pair sold the farm and relocated back to Queensland nine years ago.
The snail consultant
Victoria Howe ran into a similar issue after starting a snail farm in Yanmah in southern Western Australia with her husband in 2021.
Victoria Howe has become a self-proclaimed "snail consultant" following her own experiences. (Supplied: Victoria Howe)
"We just grew too big too quickly and then we weren't able to supply the demand," Ms Howe said.
They supplied snails to nearby restaurants and installed a large greenhouse to boost breeding, but after four years of farming they decided to close.
"It was that awful cycle that I think small businesses find themselves in: that you need more people to run the business, but then you don't have the finances to pay for them," Ms Howe said.
"We were kind of waiting for these snails to grow to sell, to make the money."
The snail pen has a wooden structure for snails to seek shade. (ABC South West Victoria: Tamsyn Buckle)
Their snails sold for between $125 and $180 per kilogram, depending on their size.
Ms Howe is now a self-described "snail consultant," using her experience to guide others.
"I would often get and still do weekly emails from people wanting to start snail farms," she said.
Unlike in Europe, where snail farming practices are passed down through generations, reliable information customised to Australian conditions is hard to find.
"It was essentially farming, but it was still sort of a very niche product, and I didn't have anyone to turn to," Ms Howe said.
Wisdom of the snails
This has also been a challenge for Ms Schaff, but she has a secret weapon.
Carolie Schaff keeps a folder of snail farming research dating back decades. (ABC South West Victoria: Tamsyn Buckle)
In a manilla folder labelled "Snail Farming Info", she has research that dates back decades and has crossed oceans.
"We've got a little booklet from October 1931 from Farming Snails in California,"
she said.
It was passed on to her from a former snail farmer in the Yarra Valley, who first received it from another retired farmer in New South Wales.
Armed with this expertise, Ms Schaff said she hoped to one day see her snails used in snail stews, sausages, pâté and even skincare.
But for now, she is happy taking things at a fittingly slow pace.
"Sometimes you fail, but you just learn and then you start again," she said.
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