Our cemetery is recorded with our county as "private" which means it is for family members only.  We have no restrictions on the preparation of the body and do not require the services of a funeral home.  Our cemetery measures 50 feet x 50 feet and is marked by four corner columns.  The monuments have an unusually deep and solid foundation in order to maintain their perpendicularity as long as possible.

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As the mourners lament their loss, perhaps the only thing we’ve left undone is to install a telephone system from bench to grave for an after-life chat.

Gayle has already envisioned future visitation by our children and grandchildren.  To accommodate a pleasant excursion to the grave site, we have installed a flagstone walkway emanating from the house and meandering through the hosta gardens to the cemetery.  Take a look at the project page titled "Flagstone Sidewalks" for further details.

Many of the projects discussed on our website are familiar topics, particularly to those who live in rural areas.  However, our cemetery project would most likely not be considered typical.  Gayle and I do not just live in a rural environment; we are part of that environment.  We see ourselves as just another living organism with rights and privileges only as precious as all other residents here in the timber.  Because we have human values however, we bear a responsibility to make room for all creatures, and to share the land together.

When Gayle and I die, we feel most comfortable following the lead of all the other creatures that call this land home.  We seek to return our elements rapidly back from whence they came: the earth.  Humans consume so many resources throughout their lives and then, upon death, their very elements are purposefully delayed from returning to the earth.  In contrast, Gayle and I joyously welcome the idea of quickly becoming an integral part of the surrounding timber.

Because we have significantly transformed the small portion of our acreage we call yard, we desired to fashion a cemetery site that connected the transformed yard with the relatively untouched woods.  The urge to capture and preserve ones legacy beyond death seems to be a persistent human quality.  Our home is the most visible evidence that we were once here, so we designed a monument that reflected this personal handiwork.  The first large truss that was raised in our timber frame home is called a hammer beam.  This design has been utilized by framers in old Europe for centuries and then brought to the eastern shores of America by early settlers.  We conceived a granite headstone with a gable shape matching the pitch of our roof.  Etched on one side of the monument is the image of the hammer beam truss.  Because of a manufacturing mistake, we also have a foot stone with the same image.

When the human body is not preserved by a mortician, decomposition is a rapid process.  A sense of urgency to inter the body is in order, but freezing weather conditions could inhibit excavation of the grave.  Therefore, we elected to pre-dig our six foot deep tomb and constructed twin boxes within, which prevent soil infiltration over the years.  Upon the day of reckoning, the slats at the top of the wooden boxes can be easily dismantled and the cavity readied for occupancy.  The back-fill earth is staged nearby for convenient tractor work.  While all of these descriptions may strike a macabre image, death is just as natural as life.  Without death, life cannot exist.