Deeply in debt, his parents sold their house in central Mansfield and moved to Bromfield's grandfather's farm on the outskirts of town.

He also worked briefly in Hollywood as a contract screenwriter for Samuel Goldwyn, Jr.[14] In 1930, he moved into a renovated 16th-century rectory, the Presbytère St-Etienne, in Senlis, north of Paris.

Regular guests included Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, Elsa Schiaparelli, Dolly Wilde, Leslie Howard, Noël Haskins Murphy, Douglas Fairbanks, Sir Francis Cyril Rose, F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald.

[19] His travels informed one of his most critically acclaimed bestsellers, The Rains Came (1937), which was adapted into a popular 1939 film starring Myrna Loy and Tyrone Power.

[20] An outspoken critic of Neville Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement (most notably in the 1939 book England, Dying Oligarchy), he left Europe shortly after the Munich Agreement with a hazy plan to move to Ohio and raise his children on an “honest-to-God farm.”[21] In December 1938, Bromfield purchased 600 acres of worn-out farmland near the town of Lucas in Pleasant Valley, Richland County, Ohio.

The organization brought together many prominent voices in 20th century ecology and agriculture, including Paul B. Sears, Hugh Hammond Bennett and Aldo Leopold.

[23] Bromfield established Malabar's national reputation in 1945 by hosting the wedding of his good friend Humphrey Bogart to Lauren Bacall.

Malabar was often visited by celebrities, including Kay Francis, Joan Fontaine, Ina Claire, Mayo Methot and James Cagney.

White captured the atmosphere of the farm in a 1948 poem in the New Yorker:  Strangers arriving by every train, Bromfield terracing against the rain, Catamounts crying, mowers mowing, Guest rooms full to overflowing, Boxers in every room of the house, Cows being milked to Brahms and Strauss, Kids arriving by van and pung, Bromfield up to his eyes in dung, Sailors, trumpeters, mystics, actors, All of them wanting to drive the tractors, All of them eager to husk the corn,

Some of them sipping their drinks till morn […][25]Bromfield's newfound interest in agriculture and environmentalism coincided with a collapse of his literary reputation.

[26] As Bromfield's literary career faltered, he began to run into major financial difficulties, compounded by the high cost of maintaining his experimental farm and his lavish lifestyle.

Among many failed business schemes, he tried to raise capital by creating satellite versions of Malabar in Wichita Falls, Texas and Itatiba, Brazil.

After the death of his wife Mary in 1952, he began a relationship with the billionaire heiress Doris Duke, who shared his interest in horticulture and conservation.

Malabar Farm State Park hosts thousands of annual visitors and maintains some aspects of Bromfield's management philosophy.