Piriheno didn't start as a hay business. It started because we had horses, and nothing we could give them to eat convinced us.
Twelve years ago we decided to keep them at home and produce their hay ourselves: the traditional way, with no herbicides or chemical fertilizers, simply looking for the best possible feed for them. That's how Paddocks Cerdanya was born, an extensive equine farm in a small village in the Cerdanya, deep in the Lleida Pyrenees, at nearly 1,500 meters of altitude.
No shortcuts, out of conviction
We don't put anything into the ground that we wouldn't want to see later in the feeder. Our meadows are worked without herbicides, without synthetic fertilizers and without preservatives. Fertility comes from the horses themselves and from rotating the meadows, not from a bag of chemical fertilizer. It's not a marketing label: it's the only way of working we've understood since day one, and it's what truly sets us apart.
Horses first
Our horses live in a herd, free, grazing our meadows in rotation all year round. Rotation isn't a minor detail: it gives each plot time to recover, and it's what keeps the meadow alive and fertile without needing to fertilize it chemically.
We try to let them live as close as possible to their wild state without losing close contact with us. Winter here is harsh — we're at nearly 1,500 meters — and even so they stay outside, in the meadow, supplementing their diet with nothing but our own hay, freely available.
And from there, the hay
We mow the very same meadows they graze, between 1,470 and 1,700 meters of altitude, with a single cut from June to July, when the grass is in early bloom. At that altitude the grass grows slowly: fine stem, abundant leaf and little lignin. That's why a mountain hay nourishes better than a valley hay mown late.
It's then sun-dried, without forcing it, and baled right on the plot. No additives, no preservatives, no hot-pressing. The hay we sell is exactly the same as what our own horses eat —high-mountain, single-cut—, and that's the only guarantee we know how to give.
The farm, in pictures
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