Why is a green cemetery not easy to manage? Let us count the ways:

Transcription

1 It's not that easy being green But green's the color of Spring And green can be cool and friendly-like And green can be big like an ocean, or important Like a mountain, or tall like a tree When green is all there is to be It could make you wonder why, but why wonder why Wonder, I am green and it'll do fine, it's beautiful And I think it's what I want to be I agree, Kermit, it is not that easy being green. But it s worth the effort because being green, for us people, is good for the Earth and more specifically our Texas open space preserves. By purchasing a plot at Eloise Woods Community Natural Burial Park you are doing your part to support sustainable death care and promote conservation burial. Why is a green cemetery not easy to manage? Let us count the ways: 1. Sunken graves. There is a reason most conventional cemeteries require a 1.6 ton reinforced concrete burial vault. There is no state law requiring grave liners but most cemeteries use them to maintain a flat surface in order to mow the lawn and so that monuments don t fall over with time. At some point depending on the amount of rain we get and the type burial container used, the casket will decompose and collapse and the earth on top will sink down about 6-8 inches (in my experience so far). This is why at Eloise Woods we pile ALL the earth that comes out of the grave is piled back on top. So that after a few weeks, months or a year, when the casket degrades, there will be enough earth to keep the grave level with the surrounding area. Sometimes more earth is needed to keep the area relatively even. The reason this not easy is because I never know when this collapse of the ground will occur. I fill in the grave as soon as I discover the depression; however, on one of your visits you may find the sunken grave before I do which can be disconcerting. But don t worry about what you will see it looks like this (no bones or body parts sticking up).

2 2. Drainage. Water can sometimes cause problems. If you live in Texas you know that it either never rains or it rains too much at one time. It s either the chicken or the feathers! says my rural neighbor. The water is great for the trees and wildflowers but bad for the roads, trails and people walking through the woods. Water mixed with soil = MUD! It gets VERY muddy at Eloise Woods because of our soil conditions. The first few feet of ground are called gravel/sandy loam. Then there is a layer of clay. Under drought conditions this clay layer becomes as hard as concrete. Then when it rains a lot the water absorbs quickly through the first 2-3 feet but when it hits the hard clay layer it has no where to go. So the top ground layer retains the water and becomes very squishy. It takes a long time for this water in the soil to dry up. If you step off the trails your foot might sink into the mud. We had a Suburban sink nearly a foot into the mud in the middle of a meadow when the driver accidentally drove off the road. Don t drive off the road. Digging even a small hole to bury a cremains urn is difficult after a big rain because the hole keeps filling up with water. Water will always travel to the lowest point. If we dig a grave under these conditions, we need to have the casket lowered immediately

3 into the ground after the grave is opened and then have the casket covered with earth before the opening fills up with water. A light- weight casket, like bamboo or wicker will float and might tip and capsize. Therefore be prepared to conduct any ceremony either before arriving at the burial park or after the grave is filled. Otherwise you might have a burial at sea. 2 ½. More on Mud. After a big rain when the ground is spongy and muddy we spread mulch on the ground and lay tarps where people will be standing or sitting around the grave site. People might still get muddy. Guests might consider practical foot wear and not spike high heels or suede leather boots. This is actually a good idea even under in the dry season. Dress like you re going for a walk in the woods. I also like to warn people that the backhoe itself will make large grooves in the ground as it comes and goes from the site but these tracts get covered up through time. 3. Parking. There is only one main road through the park (Red Leaf Rd) and it is a single lane, narrow road. There is also Juniper Loop which circles around from the middle to the east end of Read Leaf Road. So there is no parking on this road unless all members of the funeral party plan to leave at the same time. If you are planning to have a lot of guests at the burial, they will need to park outside the cemetery on Northside Lane or Little Dear Rd and walk into the park. Guests who have trouble walking can be dropped off as near to the burial site as the road goes. You may need to designate someone in your party to help direct traffic and parking at beginning and end of the funeral. 4. Shade/Rain. In the summer when it is hot or if it raining you might want a shade structure erected. The grave digger can provide one for $ but he won t pack it on this truck unless you ask for it and so you get charged whether you use it or not. The tent is 20 x20 so there needs to be room to put it up. If your chosen burial site has a bunch of trees around it he will need to set up the tent in a nearby space which will accommodate the tent poles and ropes. He can also provide 12 chairs ($25) and a hydrolic lowering machine ($25) but again you need to ask ahead of time or he doesn t bring them along.

4 5. Perpetual Care. In 1992 a new Texas Law declared that ALL new cemeteries needed to be Perpetual Care cemeteries meaning that money is set aside to maintain the cemetery into perpetuity (forever). This is to prevent cemeteries from falling into disrepair from neglect or abandonment, which is a good idea because it s really depressing to drive by cemeteries where the tumbleweeds and beer cans have taken over and the headstones are crumbling and falling over. This is only a problem however, for conventional cemeteries where there are lawns and monuments to maintain. In a natural burial park we have no lawns or upright markers. We do need to maintain the roads, trails, and fences and remove garbage and dead trees. We do not water the plants or pull out weeds. Whatever grows naturally grows. The burial park is very Darwinian if it can survive there on its own then it can stay. Eloise Woods is not a perpetual care cemetery because we are a 10 acre- or- less community cemetery that is allowed an exemption under Health and Safety Code Chp Therefore we do not need to have a $50,000 endowed trust account that is regulated by the Department of Banking like other perpetual care cemeteries. We are also not regulated by the Texas State Funeral Commission. We do, however, have our own perpetual care account set up for the continued maintenance of the burial park into which we place 5% of all plot sales. An additional 2% of all plot sales goes into a charity burial fund for infants and indigents. 6. Future of the park. Many people ask how do I know that this place will always be a green cemetery? That it won t get bought and turned into a Walmart? It will not. When Eloise Woods was officially dedicated as a Texas Cemetery in February 2011, part of that dedication instrument filed at the Bastrop County Clerks office is a deed restriction stating that all 90.4 acres of this property will always be used exclusively for the purpose of natural burial - forever. This deed runs with the land and all future owners of the property are bound by the restriction. As for who will always manage the park I really don t know. 7. Opening/Closing/Lowering on your own. Families and Friends are welcome to dig the grave themselves. It s hard but it s possible. One family who wanted to do it themselves had 9 big 30- year old men start at 6 in the morning and they finished about 5 hours later. So if you have a foot ball team at your disposal and lots of water you can

5 do this. Or, if have the time, you can start several weeks ahead of time and dig slowly. It can be very therapeutic. You will be sore, you will be tired, you will have blisters but you will feel satisfied. Digging the grave yourself means digging with shovels and pick- axes; you may not bring in your own back hoe or some other motorized digging machine. RULE #1 is that you must have the grave finished the day before the burial. If you do not finish in time, you will have to delay your funeral for a day until you finish digging or wait our grave digger is available. RULE #2 is that you must drink at least one bottle of water/hour that you are out there in the heat. Trust me on this. People can also lower the body into the grave themselves. There are several methods of doing this ropes, slings, quilts just about anything will work but sometimes the process is not perfectly elegant. It takes at least 6 people and it s not difficult sometimes things don t go perfectly smoothly. Usually the family and friends doing the lowering are not professional or experienced body- lowerers and sometimes they don t work well in unison (not having practiced this several times beforehand). One person might drop their rope; one person might not let go as soon as the others. The body might get tilted on the way down. One side of the body might bump the side of the grave on the way down. So far no one has ever been dropped on their head, and in the end the body always ends up at the bottom of the grave and gets covered up.

6 However if it will distress you or anyone in your family greatly to see a potentially awkward lowering then you might want to choose the hydraulic lowering machine. Nothing ever goes wrong with this machine but you will be more an observer and less a participant. Unfortunately we don t own our own hydraulic lowering device (the grave digger has this) so you will need to pay for the whole opening/closing/lowering fee of $425. You basically need to decide how flexible everyone is and how well the funeral party can deal with informality, imperfection and unpredicatability. 8. Access. There are actually two entrances into the burial park. The main entrance that I prefer people to use is on the east side of the park. This single gate is never locked although there is large heavy silver chain wrapped around the post with scary- looking locks hanging from it to make it look like it s locked. Just unwrap the chain and pull the gate open towards you. About halfway across the drive you need to pull it up about an inch or it scrapes on the gravel. Just leave it open while you are visiting and close it when you leave unless you know other visitors are still in the park. Remember ONLY to visit from sunrise to sunset as there are NO lights in the park! The address of the burial park is 115 Northside Lane and this is the road on the west side of the park which we share with other Northside Lane neighbors. There is a double gate that is usually locked. There are 2 keys hidden nearby. One is under the basket of puppies on the right side of the gate and the other is in a magnetic key holder on the back of the solar panel on the left side of the gate.

7 The keys fit the big silver Master padlock. The keys do actually fit in there and you need to pull down on the lock to open. If you are a frequent park visitor I will give you your own key to this gate so you can always get in. 9. Wild animals. Another common concern is if the graves are ever disturbed by wild beasts. Well sometimes I can see that a critter has made an attempt to dig at a freshly dug grave, but they don t get very far. Wild animals are opportunistic eaters which means they are going to eat whatever is most easily and readily available. We had a wild hog invasion last year but no graves were disturbed as the pigs were snuffling around in the top soil for acorns and berries. Animals are not going to dig 2 feet through rock and gravel to find food if there is anything easier to eat above the ground. Armadillos are insectivores and dig little holes in the ground searching for grubs. They love to dig wherever people have been digging since the soil is fresh and easy to claw through. They are not carnivores. Within a year or two, however, the entire property should be fenced, so we won t have to worry about dogs, foxes or coyotes. In the mean time we use cat litter to absorb smells for the pet graves and also spray the grave and surrounding area with Repel which smells terrible to the animals (but we can t smell it after about a day). The pet graves are more shallow than the people graves so are more likely to be detected by animals. 10. What you actually own. Many people are under the false impression that by purchasing a burial plot that are actually buying the land, like their own little piece of real estate. No, you won t own the land, but only the right to be buried there. I own the land and what you buy is more like an exclusive easement to use the land. Just because you bought a plot does not mean you can do anything you like with it. Oh no no. I am the Queen and you must get my written approval for nearly everything you want to do on that plot besides bury someone there. This includes anything you want to plant there or marker you wish to place there or people you want to do work there. Be sure to read the Rules and Regulations of the Burial Park to make sure that you agree with the mission of the park and can abide by every rule. I will be ruthless in my quest to keep Eloise Woods a natural woodland. The idea being that you can stand anywhere in the park and look around and you can t tell that people are buried there. It should look like a woodland and not like a cemetery. If you see some decorations in the

8 woods (like my cat and dog angels bordering the entrance to the pet section) then I placed them there myself (how could I resist cat and dog angels?). Why can I do this and you can t do this? It s good to be Queen. So think about all these things and make sure that this is the right place for you or your loved one. Please Initial each statement. Oh, I forgot to mention one more rule: 11. There is no whining or complaining at Eloise Woods. What you see is what you get. Ask questions now before you sign the burial contract. There is a reason our plots are 70% lower than the market value. We have very little overhead costs. There are no employees (I volunteer my time). Every penny earned goes back into improving the burial park. If you want or need anything extra that I have to pay for, that same cost gets passed along to you. I only accept praise and compliments and, occasionally, advice. Ellen Macdonald, Owner, Manager, Queen Ellie s Green Burials LLC 3403 Shinoak Drive Austin, TX (512)