I an Miller came to the scythe by way of two years on a biodynamic farm in Austria, where he was professionally trained in the tool and worked through the original German texts that have shaped European scything for centuries. He holds a degree in Environmental Studies with a focus on agroecology from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and spent several seasons at Seed Savers Exchange in Iowa before turning to his own land.
Today he is building a twenty-acre scythe-based homestead near Decorah, in north-east Iowa, where he grows the grain for his bread, makes hay by hand, and finds time for stone masonry, teaching, translating and music. His Scything Handbook is among the most thorough English-language treatments of a tool that most American and British gardeners had given up on — covering blade selection, peening, the perfecting of the stroke, and the small-scale grain growing it makes possible again.
