Kentucky Proud

Ashbourne Farms elevates and celebrates rural life. KENTUCKY PROUD Written by Bridget Williams / Photography by Andy Hyslop

Heaven must be a Kentucky kind of place. This utterance, often attributed to Daniel Boone, comes to mind each time I’m lucky enough to visit Ashbourne Farms in Oldham County, a scenic 25-mile drive from downtown Louisville. This is a family farm in the truest sense, with an enduring love of the land serving as the anchoring root for endeavors carried out by subsequent generations of ownership. Austin Musselman, who owns Ashbourne Farms with his wife Janie, has spent nearly a decade restoring the property and expanding it by 1,400-acres. His original intent was to make it a sustainable working organic farm with produce and livestock that also offered a healthy and diverse habitat for wildlife. Over time, he realized from a business standpoint that achieving sustainability would mean opening it up to the public on a limited basis. “Our vision was to create a platform for people to see what we loved about the farm and celebrate interests related to rural life, Kentucky culture, and working farms in a sophisticated way,” Austin explained. An avid sportsman, he is also keen on showcasing the sporting side of the Commonwealth. The resulting carefully cultivated conception is a true celebration of the Bluegrass State.

The showpiece of the property is a 15,000-square-foot, twostory show barn-turned-event space. An attached silo has been repurposed to function as one of the most unique wine cellars you’ve likely ever seen. Within the barn’s original footprint, there is a careful balance of intimate seating areas and grand celebration spaces. Interior designer Chenault James is credited with the deft layering of earthy colors and natural textures to create the rustic-chic aesthetic. The barn, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is sited to offer unobstructed views of seemingly endless acreage. A walled terrace surrounding the structure provides ample room for guests to mingle and admire the dreamy landscape.

In addition to hosting weddings and corporate gatherings, Ashbourne Farms will produce four signature events in 2020. Each of these has a unique center of attraction, with a shared focus on the bounty of Kentucky farms and producers, bourbon, sporting pursuits, a charitable partner, and bluegrass music.

Bluegrass originated in Appalachia in the 1940s, around the time that Ashbourne Farms was hitting its stride as the country’s premier Shorthorn breeder. Austin, a long-time fan of the genre, is keen to pick up his guitar and join a band onstage. Calling it “authentically Kentucky,” he added that, “The words and lyrics are haunting, timeless, and represent rural life. I get tired of all other music but never tired of traditional bluegrass.”

Ashbourne Farms partnered with Gilda’s Club of Kentuckiana for its first All-Star Bluegrass Bash this past January. Expertly executed, the evening served as an ideal representation of the unique cultural and culinary experiences afforded by their in-house productions. The Hunting Band, a group of Grammy-award winning musicians who come together once-a-year to play for charity, headlined the event. Julian P. Van Winkle, III, president of the Old Rip Van Winkle Distillery, and Campbell Brown, President and Managing Director of Old Forester, were both on hand to provide guided bourbon tastings. Ashbourne’s culinary team shone with a delectable cornucopia of house-made delights, both sweet and savory.

August will see the return of Artisans and Epicures, an end-ofsummer tasting event that shines a spotlight on local food artisans,

producers, and chefs, allowing guests to meet and learn from tastemakers around the Commonwealth.

The Kentucky Sporting Social will debut in September. Highlights of this something-for-everyone farm-chic fête include shooting Ashbourne’s world-class 12-station sporting clays course; an upland hunt; fly casting lessons from Big Horn Fly Shop of Wyoming; an equine exhibition; an over-the-top cocktail reception with live-fire cooking; and, a performance by Town Mountain, who play bluegrass with a honky-tonk edge.

Produced in partnership with Woodford Reserve, The Blend Series will return for a second year in October. The 2019 event starred Timothy Hollingsworth, the Chef de Cuisine at Thomas Keller’s The French Laundry, who left that position to open Otium in Los Angeles. As of press time, the 2020 chef was yet to be announced. Before The Blend dinner, the team from Ashbourne hosts the star chef for four days. The entourage tours Kentucky to familiarize the chef and his team with regional food culture. The visit culminates with the chef participating in Woodford Reserve’s Personal Selection program. One of the two resulting barrels of bourbon goes home with the guest chef; the other is bottled with commemorative labels that are given to guests of The Blend dinner. “The series is intended to be a cultural sharing,” explained Annie Cobetto, Ashbourne’s Sales and Events Director. “We aim to share the best Kentucky ingredients with the guest chef, who can then incorporate them into the menu using his personal culinary perspective.”

The cocktail program at Ashbourne is evidence of this sharing. Chris Amirault, head bartender of Otium, now consults with the culinary staff at Ashbourne to create of-the-moment, farm-based cocktails. “He has catapulted our beverage program to the next level,” said Rodney Wedge, COO of Ashbourne Farms.

For a property that caps its roster of annual events to manage impact (there are just 25 on the books for 2020), Ashbourne’s culinary and beverage programs are quite robust. Under the direction of Executive Chef Patrick Roney—a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York, and an alumnus of Harvest Restaurant and the Oakroom at the Seelbach— guests are treated to next-level farm-to-table dining, with menus informed directly by what’s grown on the farm. Rodney said that the culinary program is unique to the region in that there is an ongoing collaboration between the kitchen and farm teams to plan menus six months in advance and then plant accordingly.

Austin grew up exploring Ashbourne Farms with his grandmother Sally Brown, who owned the property at that time. “She taught me how it was more interesting to look around you and know the names of trees, wildflowers, and birds,” he said. Austin recalls working hard to impress his grandmother with his knowledge or trying to stump her with something she didn’t know. “That was very hard!” he said of the latter. Today, Austin carries on her teaching

tradition by walking the farm with the culinary team, teaching them to identify wild watercress, ramps, and morels that can be incorporated into menus. They also tap maple trees and have a welldeveloped preservation program to extend the growing season’s bounty into the winter months. “There’s an innate desire to do things right, and that’s not always the easiest route,” said Rodney.

The events program at Ashbourne Farms is the continuation of a legacy of hospitality that began with modest intents and has endured for more than eight decades. Shortly after their marriage in 1935, Austin’s grandparents, W.L. Lyons Brown and Sally Brown were gifted with a few prized cows and a bull from Sally’s father Ashton Shallenberger, the 15th governor of Nebraska and the United States’ preeminent breeder of Scottish Shorthorn Cattle. With no land of their own and little disposable income in a post-depression economy, the couple leased 150 acres along Harrods Creek, which would eventually become the heart of Ashbourne Farms.

As the economy improved, the Browns purchased the leased land and expanded their farm operation. They named their endeavor Ashbourne Farms in homage to Sally’s father’s farm, also named Ashbourne, derived from a town in Derbyshire, England, where his family originated. “They both fell in love with the farm: my Grandfather with the farming and my Grandmother with nature, where she could paint, birdwatch, etc.,” said Austin.

The 1940s were a booming time for Ashbourne Farms, with Lyons and his brother George Garvin Brown, II dually running Brown-Forman and becoming regarded Shorthorn breeders in their own right. High-profile auctions drew people from across the country to the show barn. Consummate hosts, Sally and Lyons opened the Ashbourne Inn on U.S. 42, the only road connecting Cincinnati to Louisville before interstate highways. Likely the Louisville area’s first farm-to-table restaurant long before it was a culinary phenomenon, a copy of a menu from the Ashbourne Inn lists “Mrs. Shallenberger’s almond perfection candy” for sale in the gift shop along with a selection of Hadley pottery.

Throughout her life, in Louisville and beyond, Sally’s efforts were crucial in protecting and conserving not only wildlands and green spaces but also historical structures and properties of significance. “She was a conservationist before most anyone even knew what the word meant,” Austin remarked. Sally retained 850-acres of the nearly

5,000 she and Lyons had acquired and placed it under a conservation easement to protect it from development in perpetuity.

When the farm’s upkeep became too much for Sally, the idea of a sale was proposed. Austin, who grew up exploring every acre of Ashbourne, and devoted his summers in high school and college doing needed maintenance work at the farm, begged his mother to buy it. She heeded his pleadings, and Austin went on to purchase the land from his mother. Today, a restored circa 1882 farmhouse near the show barn is painted pale yellow in homage to Sally and her favorite color. It’s a subtle gesture that speaks volumes about what Ashbourne Farms means to Austin and his family. “Beyond raising my own family, it has been the biggest work of my life, and has brought all my interests together in one place,” he said.

For more information about Artisans and Epicures, The Kentucky Sporting Social, and The Blend dinner, visit ashbournefarms.com/collections/events. sl

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