Product Description

I imagine everyone has a center of gravity," says Ellen Geld. "Something which binds one to the earth and gives sense and direction to what one does." Ellen's is a writing table before a window that looks through the trees and down the slope to the croplands, revealing the changing scenes in a place that has become a way of life. The place is Fazenda Pau D'Alho, Brazil, where she and her husband Carson have lived and farmed since 1961. The changing scenes describe planting groves of coffee and pecans, and pasturing cattle in seas of grass. From her writing table, Ellen Geld here gives us View from the Fazenda, intricately weaving the threads of daily life on the farm into the broader pattern she has come to recognize in her quest for the knowledge of a country. Beginning with the serendipitous trip from her native Ohio to the outward reaches of Brazil, Geld provides us with a firsthand account of a remarkable adventure and an extraordinary life. Everywhere, using plain talk and warm humor, she seeks the character of a people who - arriving as immigrants or slaves, their blood and history mingled with that of native Indians - have created the true character of Brazil: a huge, diverse country, living in several eras at the same time, yet ever changing in its people's amazing ability to "find a way."

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1379244 in Books
• Published on: 2003-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 320 pages

From Publishers Weekly
In 1952, Geld, the daughter of an Ohio agrarian scholar, moved to Brazil with her farmer husband in search of land to cultivate. After several years of managing other people's fazendas (plantations), the two (with their children) finally bought their own land. While her husband managed their fazenda, Geld wrote cultural columns for a Brazilian newspaper and raised their children. Her descriptions of native workers can be condescending; her references to the "flatheaded, jugeared, earth-colored" men and the repeated use of the terms "ignorance" and "passivity" lend an air of anachronistic ethnocentrism. In counterpoint, she offers depictions of the cultured and intellectual upper- and middle-class hosts she and her husband met, along with a dismissal of the onerous nature of Brazilian politics. Geld simply ignores the political complexities of land ownership by foreigners as Brazilians work land they will never own. Though attentive to some ecological details, such as the runoff from sugar mills and the perils of topsoiling, Geld's ignorance of other ecological perils in the country on which so much of the planet is dependent for oxygen (Brazil has the world's largest rainforest) is troubling. Her attempts to draw parallels between the rich Ohio agrarian society of her youth and the subtropical poverty of a Brazilian farm economy in the midst of shifting political fortunes is strained as well. Geld's work is full of vivid memoir and storytelling, but devoid of any political consciousness regarding her role as an expatriate landowner in a nation rife with economic and class strife. Photos, maps.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From the Publisher
Letter from Ellen Bromfield Geld

Dear Reader,

Despite my having published nine books and countless chronicles, I have never until now seen fit to respond in writing to criticism. This time, however, it seems to me that the review of my book, VIEW FROM THE FAZENDA: A Tale of the Brazilian Heartlands, recently published in Publishers Weekly and subsequently posted on Amazon is so misleading as to make a response both fair and necessary.

Misconception in this review begins by describing my father, Pulitzer prize-winning novelist and world-renowned conservationist, Louis Bromfield as "an Ohio agrarian scholar." From there the reviewer goes on to refer to my columns in Brazil's leading newspaper O Estado de São Paulo, as cultural, although in fact they mostly pertained to agriculture, education and the lives of rural people in general, be they farm owners, sharecroppers or farm, hands. In my approach to these last, I am accused of "anachronistic ethnocentricism" for the use of such words as "ignorance" and "passivity," as well as ignoring "the political complexities of of land ownership by foreigners as Brazilians work the land they will never own." Beyond this the book is represented as maintaining, "ignorance of ecological perils in the country on which so much of the planet depends for oxygen." This despite some forty pages dedicated to a farming settlement in the Amazon wherein ecological conditions are my primary concern.

Having done my best to comprehend how the reviewer could have read this book and come to these and similarly strange conclusions, I can only conclude, myself, that the answer lies in this final damning sentence.

"Geld's work is full of vivid memoir and storytelling but devoid of any political consciousness regarding her role as an expatriate landowner in a nation rife with economic and class strife."

For it is with a consistently prejudiced and categorizing eye that the critic insists on approaching VIEW FROM THE FAZENDA as though it were meant to be an academic, socio-economic treatise. This, although one has only to take a look at the book to discover from the start that , yes, it is a book of memoir and storytelling. As such, it deals with all kinds of Brazilians living in various eras at one and the same time in such different regions as the Amazon; the drought stricken northeast; the new frontiers of central Brazil where—rather than "the subtropical poverty of a Brazilian farm economy" as the reviewer puts it—sustainable agriculture is responsible for this country’s becoming the world's second largest producer of grains.

Indeed the tales and memoirs are drawn from half a century's experience of farming, wandering and writing as I go. They are used to describe, as best as I can, a vast and diverse country and the imaginative, spirited people who, like ourselves, have come from every corner of the world to mingle and make of Brazil the open-minded, ever-changing nation that it is.

For those of you who might have been swayed by the review, I hope you take my words into consideration as you decide whether or not to read the book. For those of you who are inclined to pick up the book, my wish is for you to take it in and enjoy it in the same spirit in which it was written.

Sincerely, Ellen Bromfield Geld

From the Inside Flap
"Ellen Bromfield Geld couldn’t have had a better teacher in all the world than her father. Her writing and her life in Brazil vividly re-flect the strength of Louis Bromfield’s convictions, his love of the land and the enduring importance ofhis legacy."—Lauren Bacall

"In oftentimes poetic language, she paints a portrait as diverse as the country itself as she traverses to its far corners over the ensuing years. Whether riding a vintage paddle-wheel steamer down the . . . [r]iver, taking a group of visiting U.S. farmers on tour, attending Carnaval, or traveling deep into a mountainside where garimpeiros search for diamonds, Geld discusses history, politics and culture. She introduces the reader to unforgettable people: Dona Zeze, "who appeared from nowhere with her nine children and an old dog" and moved into the abandoned school house down the road; and Amadeu, who at age twelve, motherless and poverty-stricken, cut trees and planted coffee with the men. . . . This book resembles Geld’s tasty description of the Brazilian dish arroz carreterio: "onions, garlic, parsley, and tiny bits of sun-dried beef sauteed and then simmered with rice till dry but loose and delicious." —ForeWord Magazine

"A charming book that can be enjoyed on three levels. First, Geld gives an intimate portrayal of the people of Brazil she has come to know and what it is like living among them. Second, she describes from first-hand experience the settling of the frontier in Brazil in the twentieth-century, which was much like the settling of the U.S. a century earlier. Third, and best of all, this is the story of an amazing American couple who with courage and wit but little money, start a homestead adventure in a foreign land and, against all odds, turn it into a successful farm. Having often championed the work of Geld's father, Louis Bromfield, in print, I almost feel guilty having to say that for me Geld is the better writer of the two. And psssst, a better farmer too."

—Gene Logsdon, author of The Man Who Created Paradise

"Ellen Geld’s account of farming in Brazil takes the reader to a rug-ged and beautiful place. As she tells of her family’s adventures, the author also looks beyond at the country—the view from the fazenda—and describes with gusto Brazil’s teeming rivers, all-but-impenetrable forests, its fields and farms, its myriad exotic crea-tures, its great variety of plants, foods and flowers, and its unique stalwart people."—Dorothy Weil, author of The River Home

"Writing with a passion and point-of-view reminiscent of her fa-mous father, Louis Bromfield, Ellen Bromfield Geld describes from her firsthand experience the rapid and at times frightening trans-formation of Brazil’s rural and wild landscapes over the past fifty years. Along the way, she introduces a fascinating cast of charac-ters—rich and poor, powerful and powerless, wise and mis-guided—involved in this incredible spectacle. View from the Fazenda recalls our own rush

to ‘civilize’ the American wilderness, and questions the social, spiritual, and environmental costs of such ‘progress.’"—John Warfield Simpson, author of Yearning for the Land: A Search for the Importance of Place

Customer Reviews

Geld's book better than PW review
After posting my review of Geld's book, I read the review written by an unnamed person in the Publishers Weekly. This reviewer read a different book from the one I did, or worse chose only to skim it, with the thought of writing from their own biased understanding of Brazil. I would be willing to wager that this reviewer has never set foot on a farm nor taken the time to understand a country as big and diverse as the U. S.

The reviewer obviously wanted Geld to delve into the ecological problems of developing in the Amazon River basin and discards completely Gelds questioning of the long term issues related to development in the Amazon River basin. Geld very interestingly compared development in Parana, which she witnessed when she first arrived in Brazil, with what she saw occurring in the Amazon.

The political realities of agrarian reform are also lost on the reviewer. Several times in the book Geld explained how politicians in their attempt to improve conditions for small farmers, often complicate and hinder proper development of land. Geld's description of the small farmer who couldn't get title to his land, because the government was concerned that title would allow him to sell his land, but resulted in him not being able to borrow money to properly improve the land was but one example of her understanding and admirable description of these complex issues. Geld's quote of her father, "Poor people make poor soil," is very appropriate.

Your comment, "...parallels between the rich Ohio agrarian society of her youth and the subtropical poverty of a Brazilian farm economy", is laughable. I have visited Louis Bromfield's Malabar Farms twice in the past ten years and can tell you that the surrounding farms are anything but rich. Due to the diligence and innovative farming practices of her father, he slowly turned a run-down Depression era farm into a marvelous, model, working farm. Brazil's agricultural economy is far from poverty, as the country is rapidly overtaking the U. S. in farm production and productivity. This unnamed reviewers comments reflect either ignorance or some other hidden political agenda...

Through the Eyes of an Immigrant
Ellen Bromfield Geld's new book View From the Fazenda is a delightful chronicle of her life as an immigrant to Brazil in 1961 up through today. She and her entrepreneurial husband Carson moved to Brazil as bright newlyweds, but without many material things other than the clothes on their backs. After several jobs on ranches, they accumulated enough funds to buy a small farm of 240 acres. Unlike most typical Brazilian farmers who lived in town, the Gelds quickly built a small house, making it the focal point for the recreation from a monoculture coffee farm into a diversified model. Showing a true love of the land Geld, writes of the many conservation innovations they bring to the farm with terracing, crop rotations and other ecologically friendly improvements.

Her travels throughout Brazil are interesting and well told. The best are her experiences in the fragile Amazon in Alta Floresta; Riding the riverboat on the River Sao Francisco; and the beauty of the relatively unknown Plantanal. She vividly describes the wonders she encounters in these sparsely populated, wild west areas of Brazil. While explaining these new areas, she also expresses her uneasiness and concern with how development is occurring in many of these areas relating them to the older areas of Parana that she saw develop when she first arrived in Brazil.

Several of her stories in the book are particularly humorous. Two of the better ones are how she has to show a group of Brazilian tourists that an American motel is not paid for by the hour and her experience of riding the Brazilian equivalent to the Orient Express.

Her forty year experience of adapting to a new country, raising a family of five children (all of whom study abroad but return to Brazil), and seeing the changes that occur over forty years is extremely interesting. It brought to mind what my ancestors might have faced when they came to the U. S. several generations ago to begin a new life as farmers in a very strange land.

I started the book over a weekend and couldn't put it down. It is highly recommended.