Linda Barnes, professor of biology at Marshalltown Community College in Iowa and an organic farmer with her husband Mark Runquist, accepted a $25,000 challenge grant from the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture (Iowa State University) in 2004 to initiate a two-year sustainable agriculture degree program that is the first of its kind in the Midwest:

Mark and Linda (and their three children) live on their eight acre farm near Melbourne, Iowa. They are members of the UU Fellowship of Ames, Iowa. And, yes, they raise most all of the food that sustains their family.

Singer and songwriter Peter Mayer is well known to UUs in our area. He is the author of the well known and much loved song Blue Boat Home.

Peter writes songs for a small planet—songs about interconnectedness and the human journey; about the beauty and the mystery of the world. Whimsical, humorous, and profound, his music breaks the boundaries of “folk”, and transcends to a realm beyond the everyday love song, to a place of wonder at the very fact of life itself.

Peter began playing the guitar and writing songs when he was in high school. He studied theology and music in college, and then spent two years in seminary. After deciding that the priesthood wasn’t for him, he took a part-time job as a church music director for 8 years, while performing at clubs and colleges and writing and recording his music. In 1995 he quit his job and started touring full-time. Since then, Peter has gradually gained a dedicated, word-of-mouth following, selling out shows from Minnesota to Texas, New England to California. He has eight CDs to his credit, and has sold over 50,000 of them independently.