Down to Earth
Description
A new book from Robert Ashton, the 2024 Wainwright Prize longlisted author of Where Are The Fellows Who Cut the Hay? . . .
‘To forget how to dig the earth and to tend the soil is to forget ourselves’ Gandhi
We rely on soil for our food, for the rich biodiversity that defines life on this planet and much of our traditions and folklore, but are we guilty in today’s largely urban age of taking it for granted? And if we are – what is the cost?
The books of oral historian George Ewart Evans, farmer and journalist Adrian Bell, both of whom lived in Suffolk, described a way of life where people’s connection with the earth was intimate in a way we find hard to imagine today. H. Rider Haggard, who farmed on the Norfolk Suffolk border in the late nineteenth century vividly wrote in great detail about how the men on his farm would labour in the fields.
With these writers in mind, and prompted by tragedy and coincidence, I set off to explore our relationship with soil. I didn’t want to write another textbook, although I will dip into soil science, nor did I want to make a plea for environmental action, though there is an undeniable link between how we treat soil and its ability to capture, or release, damaging carbon dioxide. Instead I want to meet and learn from people whose jobs involve working with earth.
Each chapter will focus on one aspect of our relationship with soil, opening with how we used to think about and work with earth, drawing on books written over the past 500 years, before telling the stories of practitioners who work with earth today. From gardener to gravedigger and archaeologist to agriculturalist, I go on a quest both to deepen my own understanding of the ground beneath my feet, and perhaps also to help you, the reader, develop a more informed view of the importance of soil to our lives today.