Consignment debut in the books, Postmaster Farm looks to the future

Finding a multi-generational operation on the grounds of the Keeneland September yearling sale is about as easy as stepping in a puddle on a rainy day, but finding an outfit making its debut as a consignor is a harder task.

In founding Postmaster Farm, brothers Brent and Todd Wilson kept the business in the family, right down to the name. The 40-acre property on the east side of Lexington, Ky. is named in honor of their grandfather Gene Wilson, a former postmaster in Versailles, Ind.

Brent Wilson, 35, was previously general manager for Marc Ferrell’s VinMar Farm prior to its dispersal at last year’s Keeneland November breeding stock sale. After the VinMar assets were sold, Wilson and his brother leased the land that would become Postmaster Farm in January.

Postmaster Farm debuted with a consignment at this year’s Keeneland September sale with a single horse in Book 2, a Bernardini filly out of the Grade 2-placed stakes-winning Five Star Day mare Sweet Cassiopeia. She was offered as agent for Dan Considine and Steve Snowden, who bred and raced Sweet Cassiopeia and bred the yearling filly on a foal-share agreement with Godolphin.

“After raising her on the farm, we felt like we knew her as well as anybody, so here we are,” Brent Wilson said.

Debuting at the Keeneland September sale was the next step on a path in the Thoroughbred industry that began in Batesville, Ind., where their father, lawyer Douglas Wilson, owned and bred racehorses.

After grandfather Gene’s death in the mid-1990s, the family named a homebred Little Missouri colt Mr. Postmaster, keeping the title running in the family. He went on to become stakes-placed in Kentucky and Indiana, and ran in the Midwest for seven years.

“We grew up on a small farm, breeding and racing in Indiana, then I went to school at [the University of Kentucky] and haven’t looked back since,” Wilson said.

Wilson moved to central Kentucky in 2001, and spent nearly a decade working at Pin Oak Stud in Versailles, Ky. before starting for VinMar Farm.

Postmaster Farm’s consigning debut ended last week with a $40,000 fall of the hammer. The filly went to Considine to buy out his partners.

Wilson admitted it was hard to stand out as a new entity and a single-horse consignment in the auction’s massive second book. The farm’s shingle will hang once again at the Keeneland November breeding stock sale with a handful of offerings.

In the meantime, Wilson hoped the exposure of having the Postmaster Farm name so high in the Keeneland September catalog would be a useful stepping-stone toward the farm’s larger goals.

“Right now, we’re a boarding operation,” he said. “We own about a quarter of the mares ourselves, and we’d like to get that number to at least 50-50, and maybe even to where we own two-thirds of the stock and just board for some long-term clients that we’ve had in the past.”