Dear Reader,

We’re just one day away from the publication of Katie's book, No Paradise With Wolves - the story of how we found our way to this valley in Asturias, stumbled upon a defunct dairy farm, and slowly brought Wild Finca back to life. It’s a book about arrival and belonging, about the creatures who joined us (wild, domestic, and human), and about the many messy, magical years that followed.

And today, we get to share something that still doesn’t feel quite real…

BBC Wildlife Magazine has named No Paradise With Wolves one of their Best Books of 2025!

A huge thank you to Ben Hoare - brilliant natural history writer, this year's Children's Wainwright Prize for Non-Fiction Winner and author of some of Ro and Albs absolute favourite books - for choosing to include it.

Seeing my book listed alongside writing royalty like Robert Macfarlane, Sophie Pavelle, Michael Warren, Hamza Yassin, and so many others … an astonishing feeling quite honestly!

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Or pick it up at your local bookstores!

And as if that wasn’t enough excitement for one week… we had a message from a neighbour just over the hill who had captured a wolf on his camera trap. Less than a kilometre away!

We’ve always known they roam the nearby mountain range, but this is the closest proven wolf sighting to Wild Finca since we arrived. And it’s entirely possible he passed through our land!

Ironically, this was the one year we didn’t have our own camera traps active. With Luke deep in the thick of the house build, we’d brought them in for battery changes, and never managed to get them back out again.

But here’s to 2026 - post-build, post-chaos - when we can finally get our full network of cameras running again. Who knows what stories they’ll capture next?

In other news, the building work continues… and if we’re honest, it’s taking up the majority of our time and headspace. Luke is starting to regret doing the build himself, but Katie is confident it will all be worth it in the end.

Meanwhile, life at Wild Finca carries on.

The cows currently have a visiting boyfriend, and the horses are off on their own little holiday, grazing a neighbour’s fields for the next few weeks. The Redwings have arrived and the toads have moved on from the fuente - deeply disappointing for Roan and Albus, whose daily ritual of counting how many “mates” were lounging on the fountain’s edge after school has become far less exciting.

If you missed it, we did have a spectacular Fire Salamander bonanza recently - you can catch up on that here!

We hope you are enjoying a wild wonderful Autumn,

From our wild corner to yours,

Katie, Luke, Roan & Albus

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