“Ancient poetry and mythology suggest, at least, that husbandry was once a sacred art, but it is pursued by irreverent haste and heedlessness by us, our object being to have large farms and large crops merely.”
In this passage, Thoreau states that the human desire for more has basically ruined the sacred art of husbandry (farming). This passage irritates me because Thoreau himself had a bean-field whose rows added together was seven miles long, as stated at the beginning of the chapter called “The Bean field”. Personally, this passage reminds me of the most famous parent saying ever, “do as I say, not as I do”. Thoreau states that we shouldn’t have these big crop fields, even though he has one.