Robert Clay of Three Chimneys Farm gets award from Bluegrass Tomorrow for farmland preservation work

Robert Clay

Robert Clay, founder of Three Chimneys Farm near Midway, received the Bluegrass Legacy Award of Bluegrass Tomorrow, the farmland-preservation group he co-founded in 1989, at its 30th anniversary dinner Thursday night.

Clay accepted the award from former Three Chimneys manager Dan Rosenberg, who said "This work would be his longest, truest legacy."

Former BGT chair Alex Warren, who was senior operations vice president at Toyota, recalled that Clay and Joe Graves came to him in 1989, saying that the Thoroughbred industry "was at a low ebb" while Toyota was expanding, driving growth, and they were concerned that all or part of Calumet Farm would become a commercial or residential development. He said Clay was "the man who started this, and has been the backbone all the way through it."

Clay gave Graves credit for the idea, and recognized original BGT directors who were at the dinner, including Midway lawyer Hank Graddy.

The group inspired the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government's Purchase of Development Rights program and the Bluegrass Land Conservancy, which Clay said have protected more than 15,000 acres of Bluegrass land from development. He said leaders in the region "continue to embrace the idea of saving its cultural landscape and quality of life."

The group originally focused on seven counties, but now includes 18. "County lines in Kentucky were drawn for very outdated reasons," and have been barriers to cooperation, Clay said. "We cannot compete as 18 separate communities, but we can as a region."

The dinner at Fasig-Tipton was catered by Ouita Michel of Midway, who told the crowd of 200, "Agriculture in Kentucky is so tied to how we see ourselves in the world, and I try to put that on your plate." The entree was all-natural Kentucky Proud roasted chicken with distillers' mixed grain pilaf and roasted Brussels sprouts, with a Happy Jack's kabocha squash salad, including local lettuces with a thin slice of Broadbent country ham.