Malabar Farm State Park

Malabar Farm State Park. . , Mount Jeez , In 1942, Louis Bromfield bought farmland that includes what is now called Mount Jeez. Previously known as Poverty Knob, it was one of the earliest farms established in Monroe Township, but by the time he purchased the land, no local farmer was willing to rent or lease its depleted fields., In his writing, Bromfield frequently mentioned this high hill and its surrounding farmland, describing its sad history and how he restored its productivity., Louis Bromfield , Novelist Louis Bromfield was born and raised in Mansfield, Ohio on December 27, 1896. After studying at Cornell and Columbia universities, serving in the U.S. Army during the First World War, living in New York and France, and writing several novels, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning Early Autumn, he purchased several small farms in 1939 to establish Malabar Farm., He continued to write novels but gradually transitioned from fiction writer to self-educated, conservation-minded farmer. By the late 1940s, Bromfield acquired a national reputation as an authority on sustainable agriculture, and Malabar Farm was called the most famous farm in America., In 1972, Malabar Farm was gifted to the State of Ohio and designated an Ohio State Park in 1976. It continues to be a working farm, preserving Louis Bromfield's memory and work., The hills had been corned out, farmed out, pastured out, sheeped out and abandoned. On them there remained not a grain of topsoil... Even in the months of May and June the hills, seen across the Valley from the Big House, were brown... The hills were known widely as the poorest land in the township. , -Louis Bromfield, Out Of The Earth, 1950, Man cannot himself escape from Nature. Neither can he ever subdue her or attempt to exploit her endlessly without himself becoming the victim. , -Louis Bromfield, Pleasant Valley, 1945, The adventure at Malabar is by no means finished... the land came to us out of eternity and when the youngest of us associated with it dies, it will still be here. The best we can hope to do is to leave the mark of our fleeting existence upon it, to die knowing that we have changed a small corner of this earth for the better, by wisdom, knowledge, and hard work. , -Louis Bromfield, Pleasant Valley, 1945