October 2025

Dear Readers,

What a month... Our emotions turned completely upside down. Melancholy, joy, despair, exhaustion, and then, out of nowhere, a surge of new energy.

We've been searching for a long time for a new location/farm where our rescued animals could live a beautiful and species-appropriate life.
Now, at last, we've found a farm—quite literally at the last minute.
A sanctuary, a refuge for many animal species—that is Finca Noah, and it's relocating. None of us has ever tackled such a task before. Packing household belongings into moving boxes is one thing; getting our animals stress-free to the new farm is quite another. Six years ago, Farah built Finca Noah on a rented plot of land that looked like a private garbage dump. Farah spent an entire year planning, building, hauling, investing enormous amounts of time, energy, sweat, and money. The creation of Finca Noah was documented by TV station 3+ with the TV format Adieu Heimat. The story continues—you can follow the new episodes featuring Farah, Animal Police, and the animal relocation in the current season.

Barely had the first enclosures been completed when animals began moving in, one by one, creatures who needed help to survive for various reasons.
Everything that Farah built with so much love and passion must now be dismantled and, in part, torn down in just a few days. Anyone who knows Finca Noah understands how much love and attention to detail went into every corner, which makes the fact that absolutely everything has to be taken apart not any easier. All the enclosures, all the little wooden houses, every shelter, every single fence post and fence panel, every stone—even the gravel that largely covers the farm so you don't sink into mud on rainy days—all of it must go. Everything that can be set up and rebuilt on the new farm will be carefully packed and moved. Everything else will be sold, given away, or disposed of with heavy hearts. A task we could not have accomplished without the help of friends and family. Dear Thorsten flew in with his colleagues from Switzerland for a weekend to actively support us. Nine strong women and men helped us and the animals with the dismantling and rebuilding. A gesture we deeply appreciate, and we're infinitely grateful that there are people who stand by us and don't leave us alone with all this work. A huge thank you once again to everyone.

Even if you plan a move like this and think through thousands of scenarios about who takes on which tasks to avoid chaos, things happen that you haven't planned for and couldn't have foreseen.

The relocation of the farm animals, for example. Horses, donkeys, sheep, a deer, and our pig Magritt had to be transported to the new farm using an official animal transport service. It takes a lot of organizing to even get an appointment, and because it was so difficult, we couldn't reschedule the date even though we would have liked to postpone it due to the weather. It was pouring rain, we were standing in mud, the enclosures weren't even secured until the day of transport, and emotionally we weren't really ready to say it's finally happening. Our biggest worry—how we'd get our deer Coco into the transporter—kept us up at night. In the end, Coco confidently followed her friends, the sheep, and moved without any problems. Coco did initially break out of the enclosure repeatedly, but we let her enjoy the pleasure and curiosity of discovering the forest. Our three horses and donkey Pablo have been at Finca Noah for 5 years, but they'd never been together before. To our surprise, introducing them at the new location worked wonderfully. They got to know each other at Finca Noah after being separated for years, but they'd never actually been together until now. Farah took the step and discovered that our animals are much more social with each other than we always think.

Beyond all the joy that our animals arrived safely, we also have concerns that weigh on us.

We still need donations so we can transform Finca Noah 2.0 into a species-appropriate, peaceful, and safe place.

We've received truly generous support in recent months and have been able to accomplish a lot with those donations. I don't want to say we underestimated it, but the dismantling, the move, the renovation work—all of it costs so much that we can't minimize it despite doing a lot of the work ourselves. We're working 20 hours a day, getting very short nights and little sleep, eating very unhealthily because the private part of the house isn't finished yet either. With so much work with and for the animals, there's not much time to unpack the moving boxes—so we start searching anew every single day. We're essentially starting from scratch. It will take some time before our daily routine settles in, everything finds its place, and we feel settled at our new location. We have the feeling our animals have already adapted well and feel comfortable at the new farm. When the animals are doing well, we're doing well too. Our animals are like our children, and all the mothers among you readers will confirm that the wellbeing of those in our care is what matters most.

At this point, we want to thank once again everyone who has supported us. We've been pleasantly surprised more than once by how many people stand behind Animal Police and don't abandon the animals.

We thank you sincerely for reading and hope we've entertained you once again.

Warmest greetings from the new farm

Nadine De Tomi