D4 EZ SU THE WASHINGTON POST.SATURDAY, MAY 7 , 2022
in the yard one Friday night, tired
from four tours, studying the Dai-
ly Racing Form, when a car pulled
up. He asked whether they could
return Saturday, a nd they said no,
and they seemed nice, so wearily
he drove the golf cart carrying the
pair of North Dakotans. So one
ends up saying, “I want to make a
donation but I forgot my check-
book,” of which Blowen says, “Let
me put it this way: That’s not the
first time I’ve heard that.” Then an
email popped in a few weeks later,
saying, “I haven’t forgotten,” and,
“It’s a one-time-only donation,” so
Blowen figured that meant a good
chunk like $200 or $500 or maybe
even $1,000.
So: “So anyway, I don’t think
much more about it, and then I
still haven’t started to call people
and bother them about the mon-
ey, and then the Monday after
Thanksgiving, I go t o the mailbox,
and there’s an envelope there
from Fargo, North Dakota. And
there’s no letter in it. And there’s
no nothing. The only thing in it
was a check. And I opened up, and
it’s a handwritten check,” and it
came from the tourist who hap-
pened to be a biotechnology pio-
neer and...
“A nd it was for a half a million
dollars.”
(Pause.)
“I said, ‘Oh, that’s a Pick Six!’ ”
He has ridden the adventure to
rarefied consciousness. He can
tell how stallions must have their
own pastures because, as he said:
CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGENew England trainer in the late
1990 s. “The slaughter truck used
to show up every week and pick
up horses” who would “disappear
from the shed row.”
He c onvinced his wife, a former
Boston Globe columnist, to move
to Kentucky after she complied
on the condition that he wouldn’t
go looking for her once she left
him. (She still hasn’t.) Now they
and their staff tend to about
300 acres, about 240 retirees and
about 91 equine graves, with peo-
ple who hope to have similar
farms seeking counsel from as far
away as Japan. Now Blowen
knows things he never knew he
would, such as that Silver Charm
needs to go into the barn at night
because he loathes the headlights
on the highway.
From clueless beginnings in
2003 they have forged 19 years
birthing umpteen stories.
“It was 31 / 2 years ago right
around Halloween,” he said as
Silver Charm nodded over the
fence just behind. “I owed Wood-
ford Feed $27,000. I owed Hilan-
der Feed $23,000 because he’d
provided our hay. And then I
owed like $90,000, and I had to
pay it all by the end of the year,
and I didn’t want to get on the
phone, because I realized that if
you always have the tin cup out,
you’re going to lose. So I put it
away. Everything I did was com-
pletely counterintuitive.”
He sat in an Adirondack chair
HORSES FROM D1
Thoroughbreds get more h umane finish at retirement farm
PHOTOS BY JONATHAN NEWTON/THE WASHINGTON POST
The Old Friends thoroughbred retirement farm draws tourists from around the world, and Silver Charm is a top attraction.Kentucky Derby