Idle Hour Stock Farm was a 400 acre (1.6 km²) thoroughbred horse breeding and training farm near Lexington, Kentucky, United States established in 1906 by Colonel Edward R. Bradley.
Beginning with the sire, Black Toney, and a roster of quality broodmares, Idle Hour Farm bred great champions such as the 1929 Horse of the Year Blue Larkspur and the Champion Three-Year-Old Colt, Bimelech. In 1931, the farm acquired the mare La Troienne from noted French breeder Marcel Boussac. La Troienne became one of the most influential mares to be imported into the U.S. in the 20th century. Her offspring produced champions including Idle Hour Farm's Bimlech, and its own two-year-old Champion Filly of 1944 and the 1945 Horse of the Year, Busher who was sold to movie mogul Louis B. Mayer. Later generation champions such as Buckpasser and Easy Goer trace their line to La Troienne.
As well, under farm manager Olin B. Gentry and future Hall of Fame trainer "Derby Dick" Thompson, and later trainer Bill Hurley, the farm raced horses that won numerous major stakes races, including multiple winners in each of the U.S. Triple Crown events.
As part of a program honoring important horse racing tracks and racing stables, the Pennsylvania Railroad named its baggage car #5846 the "Idle Hour Stock Farm".
After Colonel Bradley's death in 1946, Ogden Phipps purchased a group of Idle Hour's bloodstock that became the basis for what became Phipps' major horse racing operation. Allen T. Simmons purchased Idle Hour Farm at auction and the property was divided into smaller parcels. The portion on the southern side of Old Frankfort Pike was purchased by King Ranch while a southern parcel was sold to Dan and Ada Rice and became a satellite operation of their Danada Farm in Wheaton, Illinois. The core of the farm, on the north side of Old Frankfort Pike, was bought by Charles W. Moore who called it Circle M Farm. Moore owned it for only a short time before selling it to the John W. Galbreath family in 1949 who renamed it Darby Dan Farm.
Major race victories (partial list):
- Kentucky Derby - (1921, 1926, 1932, 1933)
- Preakness Stakes - (1932, 1940)
- Belmont Stakes - (1929, 1940)
- Saratoga Special Stakes - (1928, 1934, 1939)
- Hopeful Stakes - (1933, 1939, 1946)
Famous quotes containing the words idle, hour, stock and/or farm:
“Perhaps our originality manifests itself most strikingly in what we do with that which we did not originate. To discover something wholly new can be a matter of chance, of idle tinkering, or even of the chronic dissatisfaction of the untalented.”
—Eric Hoffer (1902–1983)
“—First a shiver, and then a thrill,
Then something decidedly like a spill,—
And the parson was sitting up on a rock,
At half-past nine by the meet’n’-house clock,—
Just the hour of the Earthquake shock!
MWhat do you think the parson found,
When he got up and stared around?
The poor old chaise in a heap or mound,
As if it had been to the mill and ground!”
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894)
“I’d rather I were dead and gone,
And my body laid in grave,
Ere a rusty stock o coal-black smith
My maidenhead should have.”
—Unknown. The Twa Magicians (l. 17–20)
“I respect not his labors, his farm where everything has its price, who would carry the landscape, who would carry his God, to market, if he could get anything for him; who goes to market for his god as it is; on whose farm nothing grows free, whose fields bear no crops, whose meadows no flowers, whose trees no fruit, but dollars; who loves not the beauty of his fruits, whose fruits are not ripe for him till they are turned to dollars. Give me the poverty that enjoys true wealth.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)