Willie Nelson is a legend for many different reasons. Everyone knows the legendary side of his music career, but not everyone is familiar with the work he does for rescue horses.
Stories surrounding the Red-Headed Stranger are plentiful and seemingly endless. In his 93-years on this Earth, he’s covered a lot of ground, and he’s done just about everything you can think of through his music and his life. He’s even found the time and the resources to give back to rescue horses.
Nelson and his wife live on a 700-acre ranch near Austin, Texas. The property is known as the “Luck Ranch,” and if you are wondering how that name came to be, the country singer laid it out in a very simple when talking to Texas Highways a couple of years back:
“When you’re here, you’re in Luck, and when you’re not, you’re out of Luck.”
File that in with the rest of the Willie-isms, eh?
But he’s right. The horses that live on the property are lucky, because almost all of them were saved from slaughter. Nelson is the one that stepped in and kept that from happening, and he knew just the place to provide them safe haven… the Luck Ranch. The ranch was actually built in 1985 for the film adaptation of Nelson’s Red Headed Stranger album. Evidently, he liked the property so much after filming that he bought it, and transformed it into what it is today.
Luck Ranch now serves a handful or purposes. It’s a functioning movie set (the saloon, chapel, jail and false-front storefronts make for a wonderful western backdrop), a regenerative farming operation, a horse sanctuary, the site of the yearly “Luck Reunion,” and the home of the great Willie Nelson. That’s right… he loves the property so much, he calls it home.
That also helps him stay close to his rescue horses. He’s previously said that those that reside on the ranch are the luckiest and happiest horses in the world:
“My horses are probably the luckiest horses in the world. They get hand-fed twice a day, and they were just ready to go to slaughter is probably the last thing they remembered, so they’re happy horses.”
More than 70 horses currently call the property home, and they are given plenty of room to roam on the range.
The only time they really have to share the space is when Willie Nelson and his crew put on the Luck Reunion through Luck Presents, which describes itself as “an experience-based collective.” Luck Presents puts on the annual Luck Reunion music festival every March, and also puts on other events at the ranch through the year.
Matt Bizer, the co-founder of Luck Presents, also spoke with Texas Highways and said this:
“We have an internal policy, which is we don’t talk about a world where Willie’s not in it.”
Rightfully so… the world is a better place with Willie Nelson in it, and his work through the Luck Ranch is proof of that. Here’s a peek at the Luck Ranch and it’s annual Luck Reunion event through a 2024 recap video, if you wanted to check it out:
