If you have never looked closely at the slimy snails in your garden, you may not have realised they are deaf, blind and have 14,000 teeth.

But these are the facts Claudia Ait-Touati has firmly lodged in her memory, after she started a snail farm.

Ms Ait-Touati said residents in her small town of Coonalpyn, in South Australia, thought she was crazy when she pitched the idea.

"People do think I'm a bit eccentric, that I'm a bit odd, they must think, 'those Dutch people come up with crazy ideas'," she said.

"I started working at the silos and I saw quite a few snails in the grain and, as a joke, I said to a couple of the farmers, 'you need to start farming snails'.

"I didn't get the idea out of my head — that's when we decided, why not start a snail farm?"

There are plans to expand the project with funds from snail pate sold at the market. ( ABC News: Lauren Waldhuter )

But the project, about two hours from Adelaide, has a wider purpose — it is a care farm, set up to support people with dementia and other special needs.

"A care farm is a working farm that gets used for people with care needs," Ms Ait-Touati said.

"Instead of looking at their disability or care needs, the care farm looks at what they still can do."

Visitors help feed, weed and round up escapees

Now — after five years of planning — the people it was set up to help have finally started arriving.

The project is targeted at people living with dementia, but a range of community groups are taking part.

The snails are the same type you might find in your garden and the farm's initial 3,000-strong breeding stock were simply picked up from around the town.

Now there are as many as 15,000 snails crawling through the garden beds, which are packed with different plants and vegetables to satisfy those 14,000 teeth.

Visitors help supplement-feed the snails with a grain and milk powder mix, for extra calcium, and they also weed the garden beds and round up any escapees.

Ian Gladstone was diagnosed with dementia at the age of 58. ( ABC News: Lauren Waldhuter )

Ian Gladstone, who was diagnosed with dementia at the age of 58, recently made his first trip and admits the concept initially baffled him.

"At first I thought, it can't be real, going down there and working with snails," he said.

"But I think it's a very useful place for people with dementia because it's a very tactile place.

"If you have something in your hands and you're doing something, your mind takes you away from everything else."

Personal connection drives vision for farm

Ms Ait-Touati's vision for the care farm stems from a personal connection — for four years her father spent time on a care farm in the Netherlands after being diagnosed with dementia.

"He was very depressed after his diagnosis, didn't want to go out, didn't want to eat but when he went to the farm he was back to his old self again — he just felt happy," she said.

"I thought, why isn't there anything like that in Australia?"

Grant funding turned the vision into a reality.

Claudia Ait-Touati with Narelle Sturm, who has been employed as a project officer. ( ABC News: Tony Hill )

Alzheimer's Australia SA branch chief executive Kathryn Quintel said the organisation had immediately backed the project and recently started bringing out visitors — particularly people with early-onset dementia.

"Usually when they're diagnosed they're in the prime of their life — 50 or 60 years old," she said.

"They're still working, some have just retired, and then they get a diagnosis of dementia and their whole life basically crumbles.

"People still need to still feel like they've got a purpose in their life — this is why I love the care farm, because it actually achieves that."

Hopes snail pate sales will cover expansion costs

There are plans to expand the project, but relying on grant funding will not be enough.

The farm's operators have started turning snails into pate to try and sell to the market.

"We tried a couple of recipes and served it here at the local show, and quite a lot of people tried escargot paste, or snail pate, and a lot of people actually liked it," Ms Ait-Touati said.

"That's where we're thinking of trying to sell snail pate or escargot paste in the future to fund a couple more programs that we run here at the farm.

"In the beginning [the farm] was just a crazy idea and now it's there and so many people want to get involved and do get involved.

"It's so heart-warming to see that."

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