Behind the offices at Claiborne Farm, there is a small cemetery with the names of champions inscribed on the headstones. Visitors come from all over the country to pay their respects to Secretariat, one of the greatest racehorses who ever lived. His retirement at Claiborne in 1973 helped make the farm famous.

Dr. Christine Akers performs a wellness exam on a large male cat at her practice, Paris Veterinary Clinic. After being rescued from a hoarding situation, the cat was adopted by veterinary technician Maddie Blake.

A horse walks across a pasture at sunrise at Payson Stud Farm. Bourbon and several adjacent counties are a global center for breeding Thoroughbred racehorses.

Jay Rankin, 39, harvests soybeans in Paris just before dusk. Jay leases and farms thousands of acres in Bourbon County, including on Claiborne Farm. He planted about 1,800 acres of soybeans this year.

As the sun sets at Hunterton Farm, Zhanna Lykhachava (left) and Yana Dyukareva walk out to bring horses into the stable for the night. The farm is home to some of the nation's top Standardbred horses.

Elijah Burrell, 8, rakes leaves as the distant laughter of his younger sisters reverberates around their front yard in Paris.

Bluegrass Contracting worker Julius Yeast, 44, unloads traffic cones at a storage facility in North Middletown. The town of about 640 people is in southeast Bourbon County.

First-grader Mariah Lucas reacts to a classmate's hand trick during class at North Middletown Elementary School. She is wearing a wig for a special glow-in-the-dark event taking place at the school.

Michaela Benson, 17, poses for a portrait with her goose, Chicken Little. She says he is a source of comfort when she feels sad or upset. Michaela and her friend, Caitlyn Barrett, left Paris High School at lunch one day last May and went to Tractor Supply Co. where they bought four young geese. Her other goose, Pop Tart, died.

Second graders from the North Middletown Elementary School enjoy some recess time during their field trip to the Middle Springs Farm.

Kim Ray poses for a portrait inside The Fancy Flamingo Boutique, a shop on Main Street that she opened in June 2020. Kim believes in investing in Paris through small businesses, and she encourages her community to buy local. She had no prior retail experience but now spends her days searching for inventory, communicating with wholesalers and constantly improving the store space.

Dee and Jerry Alleyne pose for a portrait with their dogs. The couple, who met training border collies to herd sheep, built their hobby farm with horses, eight border collies, sheep, donkeys, goats and more than 18 other cats and dogs. When their neighbors began to ask about its original name, Utopia, and struggled to pronounce it, they changed it to Ewetopia.

Gaylen Forrest Rankin, also known as Frosty, has an art gallery in downtown Millersburg. During the Christmas season, he works as Santa in Louisville.

Pelt, a horse born and raised at Shawhan Place, Matt Koch's farm, is shown to potential buyers at Fasig-Tipton as part of the 2023 Kentucky October Yearlings Sale. The horse sold for $2,000.

Melanie Turner, the ad director for The Bourbon County Citizen and The Citizen Advertiser, decorates the downtown office for fall with an autumn-themed garland she bought from one of the newspaper's clients.

Maria Scalia's cat, Little Tim, watches her speak with her newlywed husband, Patrick, from behind one of Patrick's antique clocks. Patrick is an antique collector and clock repairman. Maria says the couple met at a New York City nightclub in 1980 before leading separate lives for 40 years. They married in Paris in September 2023.

As part of his daily routine, Matt Koch walks a young horse to a pasture on Shawhan Place Farm. Matt is a former Marine captain and third-generation horseman. He also is the state representative for Bourbon, Nicholas and Fleming counties.

Meredith Mosley, 14, picks up her brother Wyatt Brate, 7, from an after-school program at Paris Elementary School.

Maria Scalia, 80, dances in the First Presbyterian Church in preparation for an All Saints Day celebration. A native New Yorker, Maria was a dancer into her 30s, performing in ballet and Broadway shows for about a decade. She met her "sweetheart," antique collector and clock repairman Patrick Mangan, while singing at a New York City nightclub in 1980. Maria says “sparks flew” instantly between the two. Separate marriages and 40 years kept the two apart. They found each other again when Patrick sent her a message online. They were married in a double wedding with friends in September 2023 at the ages of 80 and 73.

As the sun rises, birds fly above Hunterton Farm, which raises Standardbred horses.

Caine, a mixed-breed dog, sits in a window of a home in Paris.

A group of Amish people look on during an auction.

Laurel Gibson, an athletic trainer at Paris High School, adds gold paint to highlight the stars she painted on the Blanton Collier Stadium field for the football seniors, who were to play their final game on the grass field before they replace it with artificial turf next season.

Lotta Kosonan, 29, works at Hunterton Farm, which has some of the nation's top Standardbred horses.

Yearling horses at Briarbrooke Farm enjoy running around their enclosure in the late morning.