Clarkson’s Farm star Emma Ledbury has said she is in 'total shock' after fans continue to raise tens of thousands of pounds to help her TB hit farm.
The dairy farmer captured viewers’ hearts when she revealed to Jeremy Clarkson on his Amazon Prime Video series that half her milking herd, 60 cows, had been wiped out by TB.
Fan Rebecca Poole launched a GoFundMe appeal to help Emma which has raised more than £34,000 in less than two weeks.
Emma told Steph McGovern, host of Steph’s Packed Lunch, a daily show on Channel 4, how she’d been overwhelmed by the generosity of fans of the show.
She said: “It was a real shock. We found out this lovely lady called Beccie, that we'd never met before, a total stranger, had set up a GoFundMe page through seeing my story on Clarkson’s Farm.”
“It's really lovely, a total shock. I was literally on telly for 30 seconds, so never expected any sort of support in this way, it's just really lovely of everybody that's donated.”
Emma revealed the majority of the money raised will be donated to the Royal Agriculture Benevolent Institution (RABI) – a charity dedicated to supporting farming communities across England and Wales:
“It's become quite overwhelming the amount of support we've had from the general public and their donations," Emma said.
"So it's really lovely that there's such a big pot there now that we can give some money to RABI to ensure that they can get some more help out to other farmers through counselling or TB advice.
“It's really important that we can share the money because we could spend it quite easily here, but there's a bigger picture and it's really important to get that message across that something needs to be done in order to support these farmers.”
Emma, who runs the 120 acre farm on the Oxfordshire/Warwickshire border with husband Pete, talked about the huge impact of TB on her and other farmers in the UK:
“It's just devastating to lose your cows when you've spent so long, rearing them and getting them to be as healthy as possible, through no control of your own.
“It's really hard when you spent so long trying to develop your farm so you've got really lovely animals to lose them. It's really depressing. Mentally you just don't get over it, you can't get over losing so many cows.
“TB is a huge issue within the country. We are one of thousands and thousands of farms that are dealing with TB, who are losing tens of thousands of cows every year.”
