LUCAS — One could almost imagine Louis Bromfield back atop Mount Jeez on a brillant mid-July afternoon on Sunday.
Though he’s been gone from this earth for 70 years, the writer/conservationist/farmer would likely be smiling at what he saw.
His former land, now home to Malabar Farm State Park, is the only working farm within the Ohio Department of Natural Resources park system. The park has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1973.
The 900-plus acre property functions largely as it did during the mid-20th century when the Pulitzer Prize-winning author from Mansfield operated on land he purchased in 1938 with the threat of another war looming in Europe.
Having seen the horrors of war during World War I as a combat ambulance driver attached to the French army, Bromfield left France in 1938 and chose to return to the rolling hills of his youth in Richland County.
He began by buying three worn-out, adjoining farms in Pleasant Valley (totaling roughly 600 acres) from local landowners.
His family officially moved onto the property in 1939, living in an old existing farmhouse while he began construction on his famous 32-room neo-traditional homestead, the “Big House.”
He transformed depleted soil into a showcase of sustainable agriculture, using cover crops, contour plowing, composting and grass-based livestock systems.
He named the combined estate “Malabar Farm” after the Malabar Coast of India, which had inspired his bestselling 1937 novel The Rains Came.
Bromfield was an immensely popular writer from the 1920s through the 1940s. His novels sold in the hundreds of thousands and were adapted for Broadway and Hollywood.
Over the next two years, he purchased additional adjacent land to expand the farm’s acreage and fully launch his grand experiment in sustainable agriculture.
Bromfield turned it into a living laboratory and literary retreat that drew visitors like Eleanor Roosevelt, James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart, who married Lauren Bacall in the Big House in 1945.
Even the most famous of stars were required to do chores when visiting Malabar Farm.
In his book, “Pleasant Valley,” Bromfield wrote in 1945, “Every inch of it (the house) has been in hard use since it was built and will, I hope go on being used in the same fashion so long as it stands. Perhaps one day it will belong to the state together with the hills, valleys and woods of Malabar Farm.”
Bromfield’s prophecy came true in August 1972, when the State of Ohio accepted the deed to Malabar Farm. The state pledged to preserve the beauty and ecological value of the farm.
Nearly a century later after Bromfield started the farm, and more than a half century after the State of Ohio accepted the deed to the land, more than 100,000 visitors a year visit it today.
They continue to see livestock like beef cattle, goats, chickens and horses on the farm and its barns. They see crops in the field like corn, wheat, oats and hay, planted and harvested using the soil conservation and contour-farming techniques championed by Bromfield.
They can buy products made on the farm, including maple syrup extracted from the park’s sugar bush — produced and sold on-site.
Visitors learn about soil health, crop rotation and water conservation in the Louis Bromfield Visitor Education Center. Interns and staff maintain the operations, echoing Bromfield’s belief a farm should work with nature, not against it.
Standing atop Mount Jeez, overlooking the valley he loved, Bromfield would likely feel a deep sense of continuity. The farm that became world-famous under his care remains a beacon. Fields still produce. Soil still improves. Visitors still leave inspired.
In an era grappling with environmental limits, Malabar Farm State Park stands as proof that one man’s stubborn vision — to heal the land while feeding people and ideas — can endure.
One could imagine Sunday afternoon that Bromfield might light up a smoke, sit with his beloved Boxer dogs, survey the scene and declare it good.
The experiment continues.
(Below are photos taken Sunday at Malabar Farm State Park.)
