The Holy Earth — Reading Companion

The Earth as a Moral Partner

Bailey rejects the notion that moral responsibility is confined to human social conduct. Instead, he posits a 'deeper relation' that binds us to the natural world. The earth is not inert matter but a 'mothership' with which we can co-operate. This partnership is not abstract; it is realized through farming, eating, and the daily use of land. Bailey's language—'helpful and contributing part in the plan of a cosmos'—frames ecological action as participation in a cosmic order, not merely resource management.

The Lost Art of Husbandly Fare

A striking feature of the text is Bailey's use of Thomas Tusser's 16th-century poem to illustrate a pre-industrial ideal. He quotes Tusser's list of Christmas provisions—'Beef, mutton, and pork, shred pies of the best'—and notes that these foods 'cost a husbandman never a penny.' For Bailey, this represents a direct, reverent relationship with the land: the produce carries 'all the days in them, the sunshine, the rain, the dew of morning.' He contrasts this with modern consumption from 'the box and the bottle and the tin-can,' where the origin of food is unknown and the seasonal cycle is ignored. The critique is not nostalgic but moral: losing contact with the earth's processes leads to irreverence and mechanical living.

A Call for Conscious Celebration

Bailey proposes a practical remedy: reorienting festivals like Christmas toward the land's bounty. He asks, 'May we not once in the year remember the earth in the food that we eat?' This is not a return to Tusser's exact diet but a 'new attitude toward the table fare' that reduces manufactured goods and restores a sense of place and season. The farmer who knows his fields, hedges, and rotations experiences a 'religion' of keeping the land well. Bailey extends this to all readers, even urban ones, urging them to organize celebrations that honor the 'goodness of the land.' The tone is direct and hortatory, grounded in the concrete detail of a Christmas menu.

Bailey's argument is most compelling when it moves from principle to practice, as in the Tusser passages. Readers should attend to how he uses historical examples not as blueprints but as provocations to rethink daily habits. The book's ethical framework is less about abstract duties than about recovering a felt connection to the earth through the ordinary acts of producing and consuming food.

Sometimes I think Bailey’s husbandly fare isn’t so far from what those older voices meant, the quiet rhythm of tending and being tended. Reading him, I remember that even restless spirits—like the one in Revolted Woman: Past, present, and to come — Background and Themes—are still rooted, still reaching toward some soil of their own.