As long as he can remember, Haflinger horses were always at home at the Unterzonner Estate. The old farmer Peter Wörndle got his love of this breed of horses from his father, and he has passed it on to his son. The pretty farm is located in a dell near St. Valentine's Church above the community of Siusi. "It used to be that the farmers grew their own grain. So they needed one or two horses to pull the plow or the wagon with the harvested hay to the barn. In the wintertime, they brought their hay down from the high-altitude meadow on sleds. And the mighty steeds could even pull heavy logs all the way back to the homestead," remembers Peter, who is nicknamed "Unterzonner-Peter." Such horses had to be powerful and willing to work hard, yet modest in their needs and with a tractable nature. And the Haflinger, the "children" of the South Tyrolean mountain country (Hafling is situated above Merano), are the horses best-suited to these tasks. These mountain horses of Nordic blood – which have retained their small stature due to the climate, the landscape, and their meager fodder – are originally descended from Celtic ponies.