On a rocky 13-hectare pocket in the foothills of the Picos de Europa, Luke Massey and Katie Stacey are raising children, dogs, cattle, chicken, ducks, geese and eyebrows. In their eight years here, the farm they call Wild Finca has become a mass of scrub, with scattered large trees and dozens of clearings that Luke calls fields, but which look more like tiny irregular glades, riddled with trails and hemmed all around by the blackthorn, gorse and bramble that has sprung up around the tumbled remains of drystone walls.
If Wild Finca is a forever home to the Massey-Staceys, it is a whole world to nature. Witness the butterflies and wasp spiders, the snakes, lizards, hedgehogs and sparrows, and the thousand-piece cricket orchestra that performs each evening as the glow-worms light up. It offers denning and roosting sites for foxes, pine martens, badgers and 16 species of bat, feeding opportunities for roe deer and wild boar, several species of eagle and vulture, and a pit stop for others such as the nightingale I heard singing in early morning mist.
It is a multifaceted ecological hub, which Luke and Katie say disproves the idea that rewilding can only happen at scale. Wildlife does not see boundaries, and good land is good land.
From a UK perspective, all of Asturias is thrillingly wild, and our time here is a tonic. But it is no ecological utopia. Development for tourism appears underregulated, if the vast techno festival we see setting up nearby and the insane duck-race-cum-traffic-jam of 3,000 plastic rental kayaks bumping daily down the River Sella are anything to go by.
Corruption, commercialism, hunting and small-minded conservatism have challenged Luke and Katie at every turn, but they have allies too: kindly neighbours; the vet who regards their tiny herd as the healthiest cattle in the area; the retired police chief who repeatedly backs them; and the octogenarian who tips them off about an animal whose name is best spoken in a whisper – el lobo, the wolf.
The land here is well in range of packs living in the Picos, but the Asturian government has just announced a new cull of 67 out of 400 animals. The sanctuary of Wild Finca will not help them until wider attitudes change.
• Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian’s Country Diary, 2018-2024, is available now at guardianbookshop.com
