Woodford Reserve, Thoroughbred Heritage Horse Farm Tour, and Hot Brown at Ramsey's Diner:  A Busy Saturday in Kentucky  After a good breakfast the the Woodford Inn, we headed to the historic buildings housing Woodford Reserve, one of the oldest distilleries in Kentucky to see how the world famous Kentucky bourbon in produced.  We passed by some beautiful horse country on the way.  After a thorough and informative tour, we felt that we pretty much understood the process from combining the grain, fermenting it, kegging it and putting it in barrels.  We especially
enjoyed seeing the old buildings built out of limestone and the barrel storage where it ages in the oak barrels which are made by Woodford for the eight year aging.  The chocolate bourbon pecan candies were right tasty!

We headed into Lexington to meet our tour that we booked with Thoroughbred Heritage Horse Farm Tours where we met out tour director Dan. By the time we added a group from Texas and a family from Iowa, we had eleven people in the van.  Dan did a good job of informing us and keeping us entertained as we spent three hours touring through horse country stopping at at a stud farm where we got to see horses up close who had raced and won.

There are 450 horse farms in the fifty mile radius of Lexington.  Many are small farms, but there are also some that are worth millions of dollars and are quite large.  Horses are grown so successfully in this region because of the water which is itself rich in minerals, but also because it made the grass richer which produces animals with stronger bones.  The region has been known as the Bluegrass region from the earliest settlement because of the tall grass which covered it, blooming blue at maturity.  The region is rich in history from the time that several native American tribes shared it.  The name Kentucky comes from an Iroquois name for the region:  Ken Ta tah which meant land of tomorrows.  Lexington was named in honor of the place where the first shots of the American Revolution were fired.  The area became a commonwealth in 1792.  Many of the settlers were people who had fought in the war and were given land grants.
  
We passed by the Darby Dan Farm where the farm scenes for the movie Secretariat were filmed at a stallion and broodmare operation.  We passed one farm, Stonestreet, which had 15 miles of white fencing.  The man who owns that farm made his money in construction and has spent a right smart bunch of it on his horses and the farm!

Interestingly, of the thoroughbreds born, only 50% of them ever make it to the racetrack and of those, only 5 % ever make it to the winner's circle.

We passed one farm, Skipaway which is for sale for only fifteen million dollars.

Windstar was one of our major stops where we got a good view of some beautiful stallions which raced and are now used for breeding purposes.  One of the horses, Tiznow gets a $75,000 stud fee.  He won the Breeders Cup two years in a row and now weighs 1450 pounds.  That is a lot of horse!  Distorted Humor, another of the stallions, has three triple crown babies and 110 stakes winners.  He gets a $100,000 stud fee.

All thoroughbred horses have a January 1 birth date during the year they are born.  Since the gestation period for a horse is eleven months, the busiest breeding season is in February and March.  Colts who are born early in the year will be larger for auction and stronger for racing in the races which are for a certain age like the Triple Crown for three year-olds.

Each of the stallions have their own stalls and their own one acre paddocks.  They can not be together because they would fight and they are too valuable to risk.
After leaving the stud farms, we drove by old Pisgah Presbyterian Church and it's cemetery where former Governor Happy Chandler is buried and where the cemetery scenes for Elizabethtown were filmed.

We passed by an architectural monstrosity known as "The Castle" which looks like a German castle.  Two young lovers went to Germany while they were dating and the young woman fell in love with the castles and insisted that her fiance build her one when they came home.  Unfortunately she dumped him before the wedding.  It is now a bed and breakfast.

We stopped at the Keeneland Race Track where the race scenes for the Belmont in the movie Secretariat were filmed.  There are no races there right now, but there were people there watching simultaneous races at other tracks and betting.  The races are in April and October at Keeneland but there are horses trained there all year long.  They work out each morning.  Tickets for the patio area of the races are only five dollars and the stands, ten.

Our last stop on the tour was "Old Friends" a rescue farm for thoroughbreds who no longer have any use in the racing/breeding world.  Here we had a chance to feed horses carrots and peppermints.  One of the horses who played Seabiscuit is there now.

After saying good by to those we had shared the tour with, we made our was to Ramsey's Diner near the University of Kentucky campus to have our first "Hot Brown" open face sandwich which contains roast beef, turkey, ham, cheese sauce, tomatoes, cheddar cheese, and crispy bacon.  It was, of course, delicious.  Unfortunately we were too full after eating it to enjoy some of their pie!

Our day has been full.  We look forward to continuing our road trip after a good, restful night's sleep!