Paradise ploughed: Laferm Coco is a pastoral oasis in Mauritius
Wandering through Laferm Coco, you pass through neat little fields packed with guava and papaya and bananas and coconuts and turmeric, all hemmed in by jagged volcanic mountains, the splashes of colour from the produce impossibly saturated beneath a clear blue sky.
Elsewhere farmyard animals flap and graze and squabble. There’s a duck pond that looks like it’s been lifted from a children’s picture book, a pair of cows that lazily regard you from patches of wild grass, and dozens of bright orange chickens that follow you around in the hope you might spare them some grain.
Nestled in a remote corner of Mauritius, itself a remote island in the middle of the Indian Ocean, this idyllic 7.5 acres has a Marie Antoinette-ish quality, like nowhere this perfectly bucolic could possibly exist in real life. But Laferm Coco is a working farm, the only 100 per cent organic operation of its kind on the island.
Should you be planning a trip to Mauritius, best known for its coral beaches and high-end hotel chains (I also stayed at the five star Maradiva, which is every inch the pristinely-manicured resort that lives in your mind’s eye), Laferm Coco offers a taste of something else entirely.
I spent an afternoon there with Stefan and Christine Rouillard, a Mauritian couple who started the farm nearly a decade ago on a patch of unloved land, having previously run a construction business. By the time I arrived, snaking along dirt roads running beside the sugar cane fields ubiquitous across the island, they had already finished a day’s work, having risen at 5.30am to tend the land.
Over a spread of organic produce plucked from the farm, they told me how they had taken a dream of living among nature and turned it into this unlikely oasis (this really is their house – you can nosy through a window into their bedroom and flick through their impressive record collection).
“We had a dream of living in this type of environment,” says Stefan in a thick French-Mauritian accent. “I’ve never been able to live in towns, so I wanted to live in a natural environment. We started reading books on how to do organic farming. It started with a coconut plantation after I spoke to a friend who’s in the coconut water business. I said, ‘Okay, I’ll start by planting coconut trees instead of sugar cane’. Then we said, ‘Why not grow a few vegetables?’ Next it was ‘Why not add some chickens and ducks’. It went on and on from there and we ended up with what you can see today.”
Neither Christine nor Stefan knew the first thing about farming – so they set about reading every book on the subject they could find, experimenting with various techniques until they found ways to work the difficult Mauritian terroir.
“It took three or four years to really understand what we had to do and start getting a glimpse of a direction for the farm,” says Stefan. “We had no one to show us and all the books were European, where there is a different climate and different plants. There were times when I became discouraged and questioned if I was doing the right thing. But I was hooked on the lifestyle and determined to make it work.”
The original plan was to make a living selling their produce across the island, but they found it difficult to compete with supermarkets. Instead they turned to agro-tourism – literally “farm tourism”, a growing trend among ecologically-conscious travellers – constructing two lodges where guests can stay and get a feel for life on the farm. “Now our efforts and all the resources we’re putting in can be sustained financially by tourism.”
There are two log-cabin-style lodges, one essentially a small bedroom with an en-suite bathroom, with a second bedroom and kitchen soon to be installed. The other lodging is much bigger, sleeping up to seven, with two bedrooms, a kitchen, a living room and a veranda overlooking the fields. Those who value the finer things in life will be pleased to hear that there are regular toilets and mains electricity.
Since opening the guesthouses in 2023, the Rouillards have invited guests to dine in their home each evening, although they are now building a kitchen in one of the lodges and serving food to the lodgings. “It can get a little intense eating with guests every evening – for us and the guests,” laughs Stefan.
Those staying on the farm are free to spend their time on-site or use it as a base from which to explore the island. Laferm Coco also sells organic picnic boxes so guests can take the taste of the farm on their travels.
“The appeal of Laferm Coco is that it’s the only place in Mauritius where you can stay on a real farm, not just another tourist farm with a few ducks and a cow.”
When I visited, getting there was an adventure in itself, involving the navigation of a series of maze-like dirt tracks, although Stefan says they have since improved the roads – they are now accessible by “almost any vehicle” – and added signs. Let’s hope it’s not too easy to find, however – the feeling of being lost in paradise is part of the appeal.
• The small house is available from 7,500 Mauritian rupees a night, including breakfast and dinner. The bigger house is available from 9,500 rupees per night on a bed and breakfast basis; go to the website here for more information