The Shawshank Oak Tree, Ltd.

“Gearing up”. !

Enjoying the Reformatory Landscape .. Retro~

Reviewing Photo Memories from Past celebrations. !

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Louis Bromfield is pictured here on the sandstone ridge just above and behind where the Big House will be built. Today this ridge is covered with trees.

In 1940 Bromfield’s farm manager Max Drake asked the Soil Conservation Service (SCS) to come up with a plan to stop some of the most serious soil erosion on Malabar. An important part of the SCS plan coming together at Malabar was the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). Out of 4500 total CCC camps 800 were devoted to soil conservation. These groups of free labor, provided by young men taught useful skill while conserving America’s natural resources were the backbone of Max Drakes plans and it just happened that a Camp Rocky Fork, was opening near Mansfield, Ohio in the spring of 1940.

Thanks to SCS employee Herschel Hecker one of the first places that the enrollees from the all-African American Rocky Fork Camp worked was at Malabar. They laid out contour lines on the Malabar fields, filled and graded gullies, installed two diversion ditches on the hill behind the Big House to prevent more gullies from forming, and put in new fences to align with the land contours.

Edit: For more information like this check out Anneliese Abbott's book, Malabar Farm Louis Bromfield, Friends of the Land, and the Rise of Sustainable Agriculture.

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