My job has always been to make sure that my Great Uncle Ephraim, the fierce plowman, always had someone hammering away at the need for better farming. Don’t know that I have succeeded. I do know that events such as the Marsden Project offer the contradiction of a measure of good news weighed against the knowledge that it’s late and that we lost so much treasure when we lost all of those Uncle Ephraims, all of those Fierce Plowmen who were waiting to lend us their secrets.

from “Fierce Plowmen and the Marsden Project” by Lynn R. Miller Fall 2012 SFJ