December 2, 2016
CapitalPress.com
9
Horses cut and bale their own hay
By HEATHER SMITH THOMAS
For the Capital Press
Courtesy photos
Mike Sardinia operates a horse-drawn hay baler with a wagon attached.
They use two mowers at
the same time.
“Teri and I enjoy the hors-
es and do everything together.
With the two of us mowing it
goes faster. When we give the
horses a break we just sit and
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They have two balers, also
pulled by the horses. They
make 50-pound bales.
“It only takes two horses
to pull the motorized baler,”
he said. “We put four horses
on the wheel-drive baler if
we don’t put a wagon behind
it. We use five or six horses
if we have the wagon behind
the baler, and we prefer to do
that, so we don’t have to go
back and pick up bales off the
ground.”
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Mike Sardinia’s niece, Claire Devereaux, with a young Clydesdale
foal that wasn’t yet named.
They used to do haying for
their neighbors, but they’ve
expanded their place to the
point that they’ve got their
hands full.
“Teri and I both have oth-
er jobs,” he said. Teri teaches
high school and he has his
mobile veterinary service.
He plows with horses and
says that if you have a good
furrow horse everything goes
great.
“If I don’t have a good fur-
row horse, then it’s up to me,
and I’m not as good at going
straight,” he said.
Horses are smart, and crea-
tures of habit. If you can get
them doing the right thing,
they continue doing it, he said.
“We don’t own a tractor, so
this saves on fuel costs, ma-
chinery repairs, maintenance
and frustration when things
don’t start,” he said.
And tractors can’t repro-
duce.
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Mike Sardinia’s wife, Teri, mows
hay with a team of mares.
talk,” Sardinia said.
“The nice thing about
when you stop for a break
with the horses, everything is
quiet,” he said. “It’s a lot nicer
than with tractors.”
He and Teri both grew up
farming with tractors.
“We enjoy doing our hay-
ing with horses because it’s
less noisy,” he said. “You
can hear the birds and enjoy
peaceful surroundings. It’s al-
most like going back in time,
doing the haying and farming
without monster machines
with cabs and lights.”
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Mike Sardinia has a mobile
veterinary service he operates
from his farm near Clayton,
Wash., 30 miles north of Spo-
kane, but his passion is draft
horses.
He and his wife, Teri, have
60 acres and 13 draft horses.
“We breed and raise a few,
but also have several retired
rescue horses, living out their
lives at our place,” said Sar-
dinia.
“We mostly raise Clydes-
dales but we have an old
Shire mare who has been with
us since she was a baby,” he
said. “We adopted a Clydes-
dale from the vet school, then
we bought this Shire filly, and
they made our first team.”
At first glance they seemed
mismatched — the huge tall
Budweiser Clydesdale and
the small Shire mare, but they
worked well together.
“The little mare had a very
long stride for her size, and
the big Clydesdale gelding
didn’t. Their way of going
was amazingly well-matched;
they just didn’t look right,” he
said. “But looks aren’t every-
thing when trying to get the
work done.”
Sardinia has made videos
of working with horses — and
a movie.
“We go to the Western Re-
gional Clydesdale Show ev-
ery year to show our horses,
and also show that movie to
let people know what farm-
ing with horses looks like,”
he said. “We enjoy the hors-
es, including the retired ones,
but we have to feed them. We
raise our own hay and put up
about 80 ton per year.”
The farm has 25 acres in
hay — enough to feed the
horses and sell a little.
“This helps pay for keep-
ing the horses, since we have
so many retired horses,”
Sardinia said. “The working
horses do all the work to pro-
duce plenty of hay for them-
selves and a lot more.”
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