From her sheepfold in Indre, Delphine Serreau's voice comes through the telephone through a capricious network.
"It's extraordinary.
I am stunned,”
confides the farmer.
The online jackpot, which she launched as a cry of alarm in December in the face of crushing debts to support her herd of 80 goats in Néons-sur-Creuse, exceeded 142,000 euros, Saturday February 17 at 1 p.m. .
“I had the idea that the French would be touched by my story and would get me out of there, but with this speed, it’s crazy,”
the farmer told us on the phone this Saturday, when the prize pool had more than doubled in 24 hours.
It has been more than a year since her organic farm, where she transforms her goats' milk into AOP cheeses, has encountered serious difficulties.
“I've been in trouble for 5 months and I didn't think I'd get out of it.
I was on the edge of the abyss
,” she confides.
Has it benefited from the general discontent of farmers in recent weeks to warn of the difficulties in their profession?
Her Leetchi prize pool launched in December and still online, in which some 5,000 people have already participated, has been much more successful than she dared to believe.
To achieve this, the farmer took a trip to Paris that she will remember for a long time.
Bad luck game
Delphine Serreau didn't always want to be a farmer.
After extensive studies, this doctoral student in History who grew up in Châtellerault wanted to become a teacher.
Not feeling
“in phase”
with national education, she changed her mind.
She obtained a professional agricultural certificate, and with Sylvie, an executive in a university hospital, set up a cheese-making project.
Was she inspired by her grandmother, who lived on a farm with a few goats?
“It was a radical life change, like something idyllic
,” says his mother, Dominique.
But very quickly, the thirty-year-old encountered a multitude of obstacles.
A
“game of bad luck”
, according to his mother.
Organic cheeses, which initially sell very well, soon develop bacteria - a technical fault in the milking pipe.
Its products become incompatible for sale.
It falls back on milk, much less profitable, which causes its turnover to fall.
Personal worries - the death of his sister in particular - are added to the sudden departure of his partner, who finds the pace too harsh.
“Last blow” , the farmer receives a delivery of
“very poor quality”
hay
which considerably weakens her goats.
This defective delivery causes, according to the farmer, a loss of
“60,000 euros”
, placing her under threat of liquidation.
With the loans, the total amount claimed by his bank amounts to 400,000 euros.
Part of this debt was to be settled by December 31, 2023, but the farmer obtains additional time due to the launch of her kitty.
“Save my goats!”
, she writes in despair on the page of the Leetchi prize pool that she is launching in December.
According to articles in the local press (France 3), then national (Le Monde), donations climb.
At the end of December, they reached 38,000 euros.
A first victory, but insufficient to save the company.
Delphine then decides to appeal to the authorities.
At the Elysée with his goat
In mid-February, she went all the way to Paris.
With Princess, one of her goats - whom she calls her
"daughters",
the farmer takes her fiat and drives to the capital.
“It was my last joker
,” she confides.
“I couldn’t let my goats go to the slaughterhouse
. ”
“It’s a huge combination of circumstances
,” says his mother.
“She wanted to go to Robert Badinter’s funeral with her goat, to benefit from the media coverage.
But when she arrived at Porte d'Orléans, she remained blocked for 45 minutes.
When she arrived at Place Vendôme, the funeral was already over
.
In the meantime, the police spotted his car parked in a reserved area behind the Élysée.
The agents order her to leave.
She refuses.
Seeing the BFMTV journalists in the distance, she calls out to them.
Alerted, the Élysée guard leaves.
The affair goes back to the president's deputy chief of staff, Sibylle Samoyault, who has her escorted to the Ministry of Agriculture.
The breeder is received there by Olivier Damaisin, the national coordinator of the plan for the prevention of unhappiness in agriculture.
Her appearance on the BFMTV set on Friday finally propelled her into the spotlight.
The prize pool has already reached 60,000 euros.
“You've been on set for 5 minutes, the prize pool has increased by another 6,000 euros,”
the BFMTV journalist then tells him, visibly touched by the farmer's emotion.
This Saturday morning, it exceeded 141,000 euros.
Momentum of solidarity
Very moved by this solidarity, the farmer sends her thanks
“to all those”
who participated,
“even those who did not have the means but made comments of great kindness, which boost morale »
.
“You can’t even imagine,”
she whispers, moved to tears.
“It’s just wonderful
,” reacts his mother, for whom the most poignant remains the approximately 1,500 messages left in comments by donors
.
“ Balm
to the heart”,
she confides, recounting having been very worried over the last 5 months to hear her daughter, almost every day, talk to her about suicidal ideas.
Donations start at 1 euro and go, on four or five occasions, up to 1000 euros, says Dominique.
The mother and daughter were particularly touched by a donation of exactly 999 euros,
“as if to let me put in, symbolically, the last euro”
, interprets the farmer.
“There are fantastic people,
”
she rejoices
.
A grandmother wrote that her grandchildren had gathered everything they had to give me 12 euros.
It’s adorable .
”
Delphine does not intend to close the prize pool as long as it increases.
She admits to having underestimated in the media the total sum necessary to get her sheepfold back afloat, which amounts to 200,000 euros.
“I’m so embarrassed to ask.
But without that, I won't make it next year
,” confides the woman who no longer even has electricity at home to save the cost of repairing the broken meter.
Her goats, weakened by insufficiently rich food in recent months, no longer give as much milk, she says.
Olivier Damaisin, project manager at the Ministry of Agriculture, called her back on Friday evening to inform her of a plan put together with the prefect, the DDPP, the ANSA and the banks,
“all the protagonists who may have a role for my business to get back on track.