Malabar's Caves: An Adventure That Didn't Make It into the Book
- Anneliese Abbott
- Jul 24
- 8 min read

One of the hardest things about writing a book is that I always collect way more information than I’ll ever be able to include. It’s straightforward enough to decide where to make the cuts—if something is tangential to the main storyline and doesn’t add any important new perspectives or information, it gets left out. But sometimes that means leaving out some fascinating, if otherwise irrelevant, information. So here’s a story that didn’t make it into Malabar Farm but was really fun to research—Malabar’s caves.
In the course of my research, I found a letter that Louis Bromfield wrote in 1950 to Raymond Miollis, of the National Cheese Company in Chicago. “We are now set up and prepared to go ahead with the cheese business,” Bromfield wrote with characteristic enthusiasm. “I know of no other operation in the U.S. which is so favorably placed to go ahead with such a large and profitable operation….We also have ideal curing conditions for certain cheeses with sandstone caves and plenty of cold running spring water.” The cheese operation never worked out, but I was curious to know if any of the caves at Malabar would have been suitable for aging cheese. That’s why, when I made my second trip to Malabar in June 2018, I arranged a cave hike with Tom Bachelder, unofficial Malabar historian and fellow hiking enthusiast.

The morning of our cave hike dawned dark and rainy. In an unusual lack of preparedness, I had neglected to bring any rain gear, so I made an emergency stop at Kroger on the way to the park and picked up a $7 rain poncho. It turned me into a shapeless gray blob, but it did the trick and kept me mostly dry. Tom, in contrast, looked like a wizard with his long green raincoat, wooden walking staff, and white beard.

Our first stop was the Butternut Cave, in the Malabar woods behind the Pugh Cabin. We climbed down the wet, moss-covered rocks to this narrow slit, which I scrambled through. Tom met me at the other side because he had a shoulder injury and wasn’t up to scrambling that day. It’s a really cool cave, but I could hardly picture anyone going in there on a regular basis to age cheeses, especially since the only part with a roof was too low for anyone to stand up in.

We headed through the woods toward Ferguson Meadow, slogged through some tall wet grass and goldenrod, and followed a gas line right-of-way to the old concrete steps that are all that remains of the old Ferguson house. Then we headed down into a deep ravine full of trees and wildflowers. Tom led me across a little stream on some rocks and then we scrambled down the side of the ravine to get to Ferguson Falls, which is a sandstone rock shelter with a little trickle of water falling over the opening. This was certainly the biggest “cave” at Malabar, big enough to stand up in, but there’s no way Bromfield could ever have gotten down that ravine with cheese!

Our final stop was a tiny cave up on the hill behind the Big House. This one was the smallest yet—Tom said that he likes to take school groups up there and seven kindergarteners can squeeze inside. I decided not to try crawling in that one because it was very small and full of mosquitoes. I don’t know what Bromfield was thinking when he talked about aging cheese in a cave at Malabar—only the Ferguson rock shelter is even slightly big enough, and it’s open on one side. I decided that was just one of Bromfield’s crazier ideas that wouldn’t have ever worked, which is why I ended up not even mentioning it in the book. But I sure enjoyed my cave hike with Tom, rain and all!

BONUS: Here’s a scenario I wrote about Bromfield and cheese after my Malabar cave tour, imagining what might have happened if he had really tried to age cheese in the Ferguson cave. This is completely fiction but includes elements from many accounts of people visiting Malabar:
First of all, Bromfield calls his cook in the Big House, Reba Williams, and hands her a recipe for making a four-gallon batch of cheese. Reba sighs; on top of cooking for thirty people or so a day at the Big House, she also ends up doing most of the preserving during the summer, and peak cheesemaking season coincides with peak vegetable and fruit season. But Bromfield is the boss, so she heaves a five-gallon pot onto the stove, fills it with milk, and makes Bromfield some cheese. The cheeses sit in the kitchen for a week or so, and then it’s time to take them to the cave for aging.
When the grand day comes (sometime in July), Bromfield mentions to his lunch guests (which, let’s say, happen to include a newspaper reporter, an actress from Hollywood, and a farmer who stopped by to see the dairy operation) that he is starting in the cheesemaking business. He informs them that after lunch he plans to take the first four or five Malabar cheeses up to the Ferguson Place to age them in the big cave, and invites them to come along. This is only the beginning, he says; soon Malabar cheeses will be served in all the finest hotels in New York City, Chicago, Pittsburgh, and New Orleans. And these guests will have been there the day it all started!
Bromfield hands a cheese or two to each guest and heads out to his Jeep, which is the only vehicle that can make it up the rugged road to the Ferguson Place. Four or five of his faithful Boxer dogs insist on coming along, so they pile into the back of the Jeep next to the cheeses that Bromfield has carefully placed there. The cheeses sure smell interesting and the dogs give them an inquisitive lick or two, but after Bromfield expresses his disapproval they leave them alone and focus their attention on the ride.
The first part of the trip from the Big House is pretty smooth, along Little River Road and past the allegedly haunted Ceely Rose house. But then it’s time to turn up the old abandoned road leading to the Ferguson Place, and the going gets a little rough. The guests hold tightly to the frame of the Jeep, and the Boxers enjoy the ride, but no one notices that the cheeses are starting to bounce around a little. All of a sudden, the Jeep hits an extra large pothole with a bump, and one of the cheeses flies out and lands in the mud. Fortunately Bromfield notices right away and slams on the brakes so fast that another cheese and one of the dogs flies out. He picks the cheeses up, wipes them off a bit on his shirt, and drives a bit slower the rest of the way up to Ferguson Meadow.
Even a Jeep can’t make it all the way to the Ferguson Cave, so after driving to the far side of the meadow and saying hello to some of the dry cows and heifers that are grazing up there, he hands the cheeses to his guests and they continue to the cave on foot. At first the walk isn’t too bad, but the scramble down the ravine to get to the actual cave is pretty difficult for the actress to navigate in her high heeled shoes. It’s not so bad for the men, although having their hands full of cheese makes it hard to climb down the steep path. Eventually, however, they reach the cave and stop to admire the beautiful view down the wooded ravine. Bromfield selects a dry spot near the back of the cave and lovingly arranges his cheeses in a neat row. Then the party heads back up the hill (which is much easier since they aren’t carrying cheese anymore) and heads off to continue their tour of Malabar Farm. When the reporter goes home, he writes an article about his visit to Malabar and mentions that the cheeses should be ripe in three months; he decides to stop by again and see how they turned out. Let’s see, that would be mid-October; he puts the date on his calendar.
August goes by, then September, and it rains and is sunny and there are hot days and cool ones and wet days and dry ones. Sometimes the water falls down over the rock shelter; sometimes it doesn’t. But Bromfield is so busy leading guests around the farm and writing books and articles that he doesn’t make it out to the cave to see how his cheeses are coming along. What is there to worry about? They are in a cave, the best possible place to age cheese!
Around the middle of October, the reporter stops by Malabar again and reminds Bromfield that it has been three months. Right! With eager anticipation, Bromfield, reporter, and Boxer dogs pile back into the Jeep for another ride up to the Ferguson Place, along with a fertilizer salesman who happened to stop by that day. Up the bumpy road they drive, hanging on tightly to keep from being thrown out of the vehicle and admiring the fall colors on the “tunnel of trees,” as Bromfield calls it. Then it’s back across the pasture, down the ravine (watch out for those slippery wet leaves!), and to the cave. Bromfield rushes over to show off his cheeses, but—THEY’RE GONE!
With an exclamation unsuitable to put down in print, Bromfield looks frantically around the cave to see what might have happened. The reporter looks at the mud around the cave and notices the tracks of many small animals—raccoons, rabbits, opossums, woodchucks, squirrels, maybe even a coyote. After all, Malabar is known for its abundance of wildlife. Bromfield looks closer at where the cheeses were and finds a hard bit of rind, maybe some of the cloths or wax that had covered the cheese. But of the delicious cheeses themselves, there is nothing left. The fertilizer salesman hangs back, wondering what exactly is going on.
Slowly Bromfield and the reporter come out of the cave and stand looking down the ravine. The reporter is trying to think of something to say to make Bromfield feel better about the loss of his cheese, when he notices a slow smile start to spread across the famous author’s face. Suddenly Bromfield bursts out laughing. He laughs so long and hard that the reporter, vastly relieved, quickly joins in, and soon the salesman, though he’s still not exactly sure why, starts laughing too. The dogs wag their stumps of tails and look relieved that their master seems to be having a good time. They laugh all the way back up to the Jeep and along the bumpy road out of the woods. As Bromfield stops the jeep in front of the Big House and turns off the engine, he takes a deep breath, wipes a tear from his eye, and says,
“Well, at least something thought the cheese was good!”
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