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Malabar Farm

We left New York yesterday and drove on the 

country roads looking for antique stores.  We 

found one and it was closed.  Finally, by Cleveland 

we decided to get back on the interstate and get

to move a bit faster.  We ended up at Malabar Farm.

In this photo the main house is in the center right of

the photo, we spent the night around the corner in the

house that is in the bottom left of the photo, you can see 

it just behind a long farm building.

This month marked the 24th anniversary of 

our move to the Midwest and I have looked 

at the sign for Malabar Farm for all that time

as we took car trips between NJ and IN.

It just took me a while to actually visit.  I knew 

it was the home of an author and screenwriter

but mainly I knew it was where Bogie and Bacall

were married.  We had heard earlier in the week

that Lauren Bacall had passed away and I thought

if there was ever a perfect time to go, it was now.

Malabar Farm was the home of Louis Bromfield, a

Pulitzer prize winning author and later farmer. Bromfield

grew up in the area in central Ohio but went off to seek

fame and fortune.  He had lived in New York and gained

success and in the mid 20's he and his family took a trip

to France and ended up staying for 13 years.  In this time 

he was part of the Lost Generation of writers based in 

Paris after WWI.  He was wildly successful, in those years

 he was making $300 thousand dollars a year and 

anywhere that would have been a fortune but in post 

war France he could live VERY well.

In the late 30's, Bromfield knew another war was

brewing in Europe and decided to bring his family

home to Ohio.  They bought a few adjacent farms

and built on to an existing farmhouse to create his

dream house at Malabar Farm.  The house is much

like it was when his family lived here.  It is a nice,

large comfortable house.  It is the sort of home I 

would like to visit with lots of bookshelves and

comfy chairs.

This is Bromfield's office, the semi-circular desk

was his own design, on the outside are more 

bookshelves.

There is also a bed for Bromfield and for his dog 

in the study.  Bromfield was an insomniac and it 

is said he would only sleep a few hours a night.

Perhaps this is why he could write so much.

The Master Bedroom is just next door.

It is a pretty light filled home.

So much is just how the family left it.  These 

magazines have Bromfield's address labels

on them.

And there are bedrooms, many, many bedrooms

because the Bromfield's had many, many guests.

Funny to think so many people from all over the

world would make it to a farmhouse in rural Ohio.

Locals said you never knew who you might see 

around the area.  One day the locals were surprised

to see James Cagney working at the Farm Stand.

I guess it was a nice break from being a celebrity.

This room didn't seem to be in keeping with

the rest of the decor of the house.  The large 

patterned wallpaper with a black background

seemed garish compared to everything else.

Perhaps it was in vogue at the time.

The most famous bedroom was the honeymoon 

room that was used when Bogie and Bacall spent

their honeymoon here.  Everyone always comments

because there were twin beds!  Bromfield and Bogie

were both connected to Hollywood but that was not 

how they knew each other.  They met in New York

when they were both unknown and had a life long

friendship.

In a sunroom off the dining room is a cake showing

where Bogie and Bacall cut their wedding cake.

After touring the house we were quite hungry so

we went down the road to have lunch at the 

Malabar Inn.  The name Malabar comes from the

Malabar Hills in India.  Bromfield had visited India

and had considered buying a farm there because he

fell in love with the landscape of southern India.

Instead he ended up coming home to Ohio and 

became a farmer using innovative farming practices.

The food at the Inn was delicious.  This was our

appetizer of herbed goat cheese with crostini.

The area is known as Pleasant Valley ~ it is a 

fitting name.  Bromfield believed in organic and

self-sustaining farming methods. Some credit his

writings on farming on preventing a second dust

bowl in the United States.  He was said to be the

Man Who Had Everything ~ what a lovely thought.

Then it was time for us to hit a few antique stores 

and continue West to our American Homestead.

Letchworth State Park

When we left off yesterday we were heading to 

find a forest to sleep in.  We ended up at 

Letchworth State Park.  One of Wonderful's

co-workers had suggested it but he didn't know 

where it was.  As I was reading off local camp

sites, when I said Letchworth, he said, yes, that's

the one we need to go to.

We got there late in the day and set up camp, had

some dinner and sat around the campfire.  We had

no idea about what was special about the park since

we had only seen the campground.  In the morning,

Wonderful was about to cook some eggs and bacon

when I said, "you know, I'm not really the let's eat

breakfast at the campsite kind of girl ~ I'd much 

rather eat out".  With that, Wonderful put every-

thing away and said let's go!  

In reading the park brochure, I saw there was an

inn and said let's go there for breakfast.  The

brochure described the park as the Grand Canyon

of the East.  It wasn't until we left the camping area

that we could really see the splendor of the park.

As we rounded a bend in the road we could see

a beautiful building through the trees.

We parked and started walking through the

garden to the front of the building.  If you look

closely, it looks like fog in the distance.

Coming round to the front of the house, this is

what we saw.  This had been Mr. Letchworth's

home when it was a private estate.

And the fog in the previous photo, well, no, it was

mist from this spectacular waterfall.  Now that's

quite a unique thing to have in your front yard.

The interior is filled with beautiful carvings.

I wonder what the bells are for?

We had a lovely breakfast and chatted with the

other diners as if we were all guests of the house.

The we set out for a hike to walk off the big

breakfast.  Then it was time to start our journey 

West.

We ended up that night at Malabar Farm.

Genesee Country Village

We were up early and broke camp at our Lake

Ontario site and headed southeast to Mumford,

NY.  Today we were visiting yet another living

history museum, the Genesee Country Village.

The Genesee Country Village shows 19th century

life in 3 different phases: 

Pioneers 1795-1830

Village Center 1830-1870

Turn of the Century 1880-1920

Pioneer life must have been tough in this 

harsh climate.

This was a time when the old saying of

"make it or make do" really applied.  In 

the early years of the pioneer settlers, they

had to provide their own food, make their 

shelters and make all of the things that they

would need to survive.  It wasn't just that 

you were making your own clothing, you 

were making the cloth to make your own

clothing.

As with most living history museums, there

was the old schoolhouse.

This museum has a camp for kids so they 

can come every day and experience life in

a different time.  Just thinking about how

different my childhood was compared to my 

children's childhood is quite startling.  Imagine

when you had to make your own bread and go

out to find the eggs to make a meal.  Actually,

I think my kids would have loved to have gone

to a camp like this ~ for a while at least.

Moving into the next time period of village life,

we see how far the community has come in a few

decades.  This house was an example of a Shaker

house.  The Shakers had roots in upstate NY.  The

Shakers were very industrious and we learned they

were the first to offer seeds by catalog.

In this kitchen they were making cheese.  They

were separating the curds and whey and straining

the cheese and molding and pressing it.

This house was the boyhood home of George

Eastmam (founder of Eastman Kodak).  This

is where the quilters hang out so of course I 

especially loved it.  Look at that beauty on the 

bed.

This made me want to get busy with 

my own designs.

This woman gave a lecture on hygiene in the

19th century.  It was quite different from the

easy, modern way of life we enjoy now.

Then it was on the the Turn of the Century

area of the village.  This is a beautiful octagonal

house.

I must confess the Victorian era furnishings

seemed so gloomy and overdone after the 

simplicity of the homes from earlier times.

We were lucky to have a beautiful day for 

our visit.  We stayed until closing so we could

see all the museum had to offer.  We skipped 

lunch so as not to waste time so after we exited

we found a shady tree and pulled out our camp

chairs and had a lovely lunch from our cooler

as we listened to the birds.  Then it was time to

pack up and find a forest to sleep in for the night.

I was thinking today of what got me started in

my love for these types of museums,  when I 

was three my family took a trip to Colonial

Willamsburg,  Even though I was very young, 

I still have some memories of that trip.  One of

them has nothing to do with history but with my

own history of embarrassing myself.  I probably

only came up to my Dad's knee, and I had a habit

of wrapping my arm around his calf and leaning on

him.  It seems I did this in one of the exhibits at

Williamsburg but with a bit of a problem ~ it wasn't

my Dad!  I'm still doing weird stuff like that as you 

can see here.  It wasn't just about museums though,

I loved going to other people's houses to see how they

lived and what they ate and how their family's life was

different from my family's life.  I guess I was an

ethnographer before I even knew what that meant.

And today, it still interests me.

Sometimes Ya Win, Sometimes Ya Lose

So, as I said in a previous post, this was our

first camping trip in about a decade.  That 

meant our tent has been in the shed for about 

a decade.  We considered buying a new tent but

we weren't sure if this was something we would

do again for another ten years ~ or ever.

In the night, it rained, and rained and rained,

all night.  Since the air mattress is basically a

raft, we didn't realize just how bad things were

until we got up in the morning.  It wasn't just 

damp, there were rivulets and puddling.  I sent

Wonderful off to find a laundromat to get the

 bedding dry and I stayed behind bailing, wrestling 

a queen size air mattress inside a tent and just

generally cleaning everything.

Once that chore was out of the way, we 

headed out for the days adventures.  We

stopped at a few antique stores and enjoyed

the beauty of the landscape of western NY.

While stopped at a crossroads we spotted a

roadside hot dog stand and pulled in.  When

ordering, Wonderful was asked if he wanted 

a regular or a Sahlen's.  The guy behind him in 

line said, "Get the Sahlen's".  Frankly, (haha)

I couldn't taste a difference from a regular dog.

We just split one and were still hungry when I

saw a kid walking out with sweet potato fries.

We couldn't resist, my advice would be to change

the name to Sparky's Sweeties, the fries were

delish!

After many twists and turns we arrived at our destination

for the day, the Buffalo Niagara Heritage Museum.  Now

you all know how much I love living history museums but

this was one we had a problem with.  When we were paying 

the cashier said some of the buildings are closed because they

didn't have enough staff.

We walked outside and could look through the

doorway of the one room school.

As we walked on ~ closed...

...closed.  There was no one in sight.

We had just been charged $8 each to take 

a 10 minute walk.  It was so bad we had 

to ask for our money back.  I hate having to

do that but in principle it was just not right

to charge an admission to a closed museum.

To try to make up for this bad experience,

we headed across the border to Canada.  The

day before we had planned to visit the Botanic

Gardens but we ran out of time.  This is a lovely

garden to wander through. 

Canadians are keen gardeners and we have 

enjoyed these gardens many times.

There is a horticultural school on the property

and the students maintain the garden as part of

their three year program.

Our college friend Linda lives in western NY

and she gave us names of the best places for

local foods.  Once we crossed back to the US

and got phone service again, we found out the

recommended places were over an hour away

so we went to a place just over the bridge in

Lewiston.  We tried the Beef on Weck, named

for the type of roll, that is caraway seed and 

salt on top.  I found it to be too salty.

Luckily, we also ordered a Haystack ~ it was

delicious.  We often will order a few things and

cut them up so we can sample all the best things.

And here's a travel note:  Ask on social media for

recommendations for the area you will be visiting.

Our friend Linda told us about the long waits at the

border crossings so that prompted us to camp in

the US rather than in Canada as originally planned.

That worked out great for us.  Thanks Linda!