Ever Green Burial Company

Today I'm talking with Joel at the Ever Green Burial Company. A little bit of cemetery history, a little bit of psychology, a lot about burial practices and their impact on the environment.

A Tiny Homestead Podcast is sponsored by Chelsea Green Publishing. As a special bonus for A Tiny Homestead listeners, receive 35% off your total order from Chelsea Green by using discount code CGP35 at check-out!*

*This offer cannot be combined with other discounts. For US residents only. 

If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee -

https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes

00:00
This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead. The podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Chelsea Green Publishing. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Joel at Evergreen Burial Company, and this is a hyper local episode. Joel is maybe eight miles from me. Good morning Joel, how are you?

00:28
Good morning. I'm doing well. Thank you Good. Um, I'm so excited to talk to you about what this this thing is Because it seems kind of weird to be talking about natural burial practices, but it is Environmentally friendly it is a sustainable practice and that fits with the homesteading genre I guess so tell me about yourself and what you do so well

00:57
First of all, thank you a ton for having me. I appreciate the opportunity to talk about some of this stuff. So, I have been in the funeral industry for it's 27 years now, and I have no idea where the time has gone. And it's taken me a long time to get to where I'm at, but I love what I do. So, my main job is that I work for a, for lack of a better term, it's like a funeral home marketing company. So, we're based out of Mankato. The name of the company is Laker Planning.

01:26
We work with funeral homes throughout Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, kind of the upper Midwest. I do a lot of speaking, public speaking, and doing programs with funeral homes to talk about funeral and cremation options and the benefits of pre-planning funerals. And then another big part of what we do is talk about medical assistance rules and regulations, and that's kind of the boring stuff. But that's my main job. And the last,

01:56
couple of years I've been working with, it's called Traverse Cemetery is the original name. Green Lawn Cemetery is what it's referred to a lot and if you actually Google it or look it up on MapQuest, you have to type Green Lawn to get the name of it. So it's a little cemetery just outside of St. Peter off of County Road 20, about a mile north of town. I've driven by this cemetery.

02:24
a number of times on my way to do seminars. And one day, about two years ago, I swung in there, got out and started walking around. And it just, I don't know how to explain it. I was just drawn to the place and I thought I've got to be able to do something with this. And this would be a perfect cemetery to allow for green burials or natural burials. And I had no idea who to contact. There were

02:54
some numbers on a little old sign outside the cemetery. So I started with that. Anyway, long story short, I got ahold of the president of the board. It's run by a board of directors and his name is Robert Meyer and started talking to Robert about allowing for green burials and what the cemetery has been doing in the past and come to find out that it had been closed for many, many years.

03:23
This is about everything that I've read on this and looked up and can find, and I can't find anything to tell me different, although I have a hard time believing it. It's the second oldest cemetery in the state. A lot of these burials go back to about, you know, like the mid 1800s. There's only about 160 burials, I think, in the cemetery, and it sits on about 10 acres of land.

03:50
So, with talking to Robert, I was so lucky that he is open to the idea of green burial. And we talked on and off for two years before this actually happened. I originally wanted to buy the cemetery, but it was important to him to keep the board in place. Up until this year, the board had, you know, they met once a year.

04:14
All that they've done really for upkeep out there is mow the cemetery three or four times a year and that's about it. So he was anxious to have somebody who was interested in it because as he's getting older, he was wondering who was going to care for the cemetery, you know, someday when he's gone. So the timing was right. He was open to the idea of green burials or natural burials.

04:38
It's something that being in the funeral industry for as long as I have, I've wanted to do something with it, but I didn't really know where to start. This idea isn't for everybody. I know that, but I talked to enough people and enough groups of people to know that there's interest in it, and the funeral industry is doing really nothing to address that. That's not really their fault. Funeral industry has always been.

05:07
really slow to change and adapt to what consumers are wanting. So to be able to do something like this right in St. Peter, I'm just extremely grateful that I had the opportunity and that it worked. So what I did over last winter, I worked with ISG out of Mankato. I didn't want to go off the old maps from the 1800s. So we identified a couple areas in the cemetery that were pretty much wide open and I had them replot it.

05:36
and get me some new up-to-date maps and lay out new grave spaces. So that's what I kind of worked on over the winter and then April 1st it was ready to go and so we opened it up and we are now open to allow for greener natural burials. Awesome. I'm so excited. So I have a couple things that I want to share and then I have so many questions. Okay.

06:05
When I was little growing up in Steep Falls, Maine, I finally got old enough to ride my bike to the library, which was two miles away. I would think I was 12. And to get to the library, you had to drive out of my little block avenue and you had to drive a mile to the fire barn. Between my home and the fire barn was a creek and up the hill from the creek was a little family.

06:35
Graveyard cemetery, whatever you want to call it like from the old old old days That's so cool. I was so I was so curious and so smitten with this little tiny Plot that I would stop by there at least once every three or four times Well, that I went to the library because it was up in the woods It was above the creek you hear the creek babbling or the brook as I was told those are called in Minnesota It's a creek in Maine. It's a brook

07:05
And the birds would be singing and the light would come through the trees. That dappled sunlight, which is a very peaceful, lovely stop between the library and home. And that was where my love of cemeteries began. And I have been accused of being morbid because I, if there's a cemetery, I want to stop and check it out. And it's mostly for the history, but it's also because as I say, and it sounds really

07:33
Dead people don't talk. I really, really like quiet. I like nature sounds. And the world is so noisy that cemeteries are a great place to just stop in and breathe, take a minute and just relax. And I feel like that's probably not very nice, the people that are no longer breathing, but it's a thing. I really do love cemeteries. So when we moved from Jordan,

08:03
down to Lasur four years ago, I lost my two favorite cemeteries up there, the one by the Catholic Church and the Spirit Hill one, I think is the name of it. And so I was like, where's the nearest old cemetery? And we took 20 down to St. Peter and saw the cemetery on the left-hand side of the road. And I was like, oh, it's a new cemetery. I'm so excited. And then I found out the history of it. And it's beautiful. It's up a hillside. It has tons of old oak trees. It's gorgeous.

08:32
So when I saw your evergreen burial company thing come through my Facebook feed, I was like, I have to find out more. So that's why you and I are talking because I am a big fan of the piece that you find in cemeteries. So my questions are, I would really like you to explain what this green burial thing is to begin with, if you could. Yeah, absolutely, I can do that. I love your story.

09:01
And you are absolutely right. There is something so peaceful about a cemetery. And they're quiet, like you said. The spring was really nice out there because the water was high. The little creek that runs on the north side of it, you could hear water running most days. It's just, they are a nice, serene, and relaxing place to be. And you're surrounded by nature out there too, which I just love. So.

09:31
So green burial or natural burial, you can call it either one. The main thing with a green burial is that differs a green cemetery from a modern or normal cemeteries that we have in town is that we wouldn't use any type of a vault or a grave liner. So essentially that's a container made out of concrete that the caskets placed into. And most cemeteries require those

10:00
It's a maintenance issue for them. They don't want to go back and refill graves. They support the weight of the earth and keep the ground from sinking. And so that's why they're usually required for a casketed burial. So with a natural burial, we don't want to bury concrete in the ground. So the body is usually placed in a biodegradable casket. That could be a wicker basket. It could be a casket made out of just plain wood that's going to decompose over time and go back into the earth.

10:29
A lot of times somebody can be buried in a burial shroud, which is a cloth that the body is wrapped in, or even a simple sheet or a favorite blanket. So the body doesn't need any type of a casket if a family doesn't want that. So the body's placed directly into the ground. And then as a body decomposes and fertilizes the ground,

10:55
you know that grounds going to sink so we just have to go back and refill the grave with dirt to keep the ground level over time but if you know that ahead of time it's not such a big deal I at least to me it's not so the absence of that outer burial container or a vault is probably the biggest thing also with natural burials we would have like out at Traverse I have very few rules and regulations out there but one of them is

11:23
that if embalming is to be done, we would use non-toxic embalming fluids. They make formaldehyde-free embalming fluids. So I would have that as a requirement so that we're not putting harmful chemicals into the ground. And of course, no vaults, no outer burial containers, no concrete is being buried. And then just that the casket or the sheet.

11:49
shroud or the sheet or blanket is made out of cotton or some type of organic material so that it's going to decompose with the body. And then as far as other people in the cemetery goes, you know, I don't want to do a whole lot of mulling out there, which is a really hard thing for me because, you know, I've been brought up living in town that, you know, you keep your lawn looking nice and...

12:13
So for me to let that go has been a challenge. But what I've decided to do instead of mowing is that I've mowed paths out there and keep the grass long in the other areas.

12:25
Yes, and it looks amazing. I haven't actually been up there in a while, but the photos that you took make it look very pretty. So am I correct? I've read a bunch on this particular cemetery. There are burials for Civil War soldiers there. Is that right? Yeah, correct. There's kind of a section that would be in like the southwest corner of the cemetery.

12:51
where there are Civil War soldiers that are buried there. Some are actually buried there. Some it's questionable if they're buried there or not, but a marker has been placed out there because they were from this area. When they died, there's just question whether their bodies ever made it back to St. Peter for the burial. But yeah, we do have a section of them out there. That is awesome. And so. Yeah.

13:19
So has anyone actually been buried since you opened this up for new burials? Not since April 1st. I am still waiting to have my first burial. Okay. I've pulled some graves, you know, for people planning ahead, but I have not had an actual burial yet. So I'm excited for that. Okay. But at the same time, I don't wish that upon anyone. I was going to say that's good that no one's died, but it's a business.

13:49
Um, okay. What else can I ask you? I was so excited to talk to you and now I'm drawing a blank. Um, also cremated remains. Yeah. So you can go ahead. Yes. So it were, I'm sorry, I jumped in. Were you going to ask if we can bury cremated remains out there at the cemetery? Yeah, absolutely. Cremated remains can be buried at the cemetery. That's not a problem. It's not.

14:19
Cremation isn't necessarily a green form of final disposition. Just because of the resources we use to cremate a body, the amount of pollutants that go back into the environment when a person is cremated, but it's still an option that a lot of people are going towards. And so if somebody has cremated remains and they want them buried in the cemetery, that's perfectly fine, they can do that. We're just not gonna use.

14:48
an urn that's going to decompose. It's got to be in some type of an urn that's going to go back into the earth.

14:55
Okay, so is this cemetery now completely a green burial situation? Yeah, that's a great question. So what I normally talk about in like when I'm doing a program just on green burials is I talk about some different definitions or different categories of cemeteries. And so the Green Burial Council

15:21
They're a pretty good resource for some of this and they've defined, you know, three different types of burial grounds, a hybrid burial ground, natural burial ground and conservation burial grounds. So a hybrid burial ground, and I'm just going to be real brief in explaining these. But a hybrid burial ground is kind of like our normal cemetery that is going to offer green burial within that cemetery. So there's other cemeteries in St. Peter. There's two other ones in St. Peter that will allow for green burials. And in

15:50
in the cemetery. One of them is a resurrection cemetery that's kind of like first Lutheran cemetery and the other one is wood lawn which is past what Wing Kings, it's hobbers used to be their Wing Kings at dirt road, I can't think of the name of it, but they'll allow for it too. But the majority of their burials out there are all traditional burials with a casket and a concrete outer barrel container.

16:18
But if somebody wants natural burial in one of those two cemeteries, they'll offer it. So those would be considered like a hybrid burial ground. And then the next category are the natural burial grounds. So natural burial grounds are like a true green cemetery where there is not concrete buried in the cemetery. So no vaults. Caskets have to be biodegradable.

16:46
can be allowed in these, but again, if embalming is gonna be used, they're gonna ask that it be formaldehyde-free embalming fluids. And these cemeteries and natural burial grounds have a more naturalistic appearance to them. So they look maybe more like a park or a field or a wood lot. They don't look like a traditional cemetery with the headstones or the markers, rows and rows and rows of them. So.

17:16
I always consider that Traverse would be more like a natural burial grounds. I can't verify it completely, but my guess is going back to the 1800s, these were all pretty much natural burials out there. There weren't concrete vaults being used at that time. There might have been some embalming to get the soldiers back, the Civil War soldiers back, but the majority of the people that are buried out there, embalming didn't really

17:45
become popular in our country until the Civil War. And the reason that embalming started was in order to get the soldiers back to their hometowns for burial. Up until then embalming wasn't really used. So I think, you know, Travis was more of a natural burial grounds, kinda it would fall into that category rather than even a hybrid, but it's somewhere in between those two. If that kinda makes sense.

18:13
Yeah, tell me about the conservation one you mentioned. Yeah. So the conservation one is going to be just like a natural burial ground, but the biggest thing that's going to differentiate a conservation burial ground is that the ownership of the land has to be tied to some type of a conservation organization. Um, so those we maybe only have, I think the last I checked, we maybe had like three of those in the entire United States right now.

18:43
Okay. All right. And then the other thing that I read, I think on one of your Facebook posts, or maybe the flyers that are posted on your Facebook page about it is the natural stone for a marker. When you say natural stone, does that mean that it can't be engraved or does it just need to be a natural stone? So going back to when I said I have very few regulations out there

19:12
Markers and monuments are one thing that I haven't defined yet. And I'm hoping that over time, um, that kind of just works itself out because I have a really hard time telling a family that they can't mark a grave in the way that they want to. So if somebody wants to use a flat marker or something like that and have engraving, I'm okay with that. That's not going to be an issue for me. Um, and I think the folks that want to have natural burial, you know,

19:42
I don't think we're going to be putting up big thousands of dollars in granite headstones that are going to make it look like a regular cemetery. So, ideally what I'd really like to use is some type of cassoda stone that can be engraved on that's native to this area. We can get it easy and any marker or monument company can help us with the lettering on that. So, that would be ideal.

20:10
I don't have a problem if somebody wants to plant a tree in an open area to mark a grave or use a field stone maybe that they have and use that instead that's going to look more like a big rock with engraving on it. So I'm pretty open to that and I'm really excited to see what people come up with for ideas to mark these graves. So I've kind of left that open and not put a whole lot of requirements around that. That's great.

20:39
This is a, it's not a new idea, but it's, it's going to take a while for people to really embrace it. I feel like so leaving, leaving some imagination to the process is probably not a terrible thing. Um, also, also this green burial thing. I don't have a really good way to describe it or whatever. Evergreen, the green burial situation is less expensive than a.

21:07
quote unquote traditional burial as from what I'm seeing too. So that helps. Yeah, absolutely. So green burials in general, you know, when we look at like a traditional funeral with a casket and a vault and a service at our church or at the funeral home. So I'm talking about for traditional funerals, you know, on average in Minnesota, that's averaging around $15,000 and up. With a green burial,

21:35
We're not doing embalming. We're buying a minimal type container to contain the body. We can still have a service with it, but we're looking at costs that are gonna be a lot closer to the five to $10,000 range. And when I say 10,000, that's really stretching it. Every funeral home on their general price list is gonna have an option for direct burial or immediate burial. And what that would include usually is the funeral home's charges,

22:03
their basic services for their funeral home and staff. Cost for the removal of the body from wherever the person dies. We wouldn't have embalming in most cases with that, with a direct or an immediate burial, and then transportation to the cemetery for a graveside service. You know, and that's gonna be a lot closer to that $5,000 mark. And then if somebody wants to add in a funeral service after that, you know, maybe the body's not present for that.

22:33
because burial would take place in those first 72 hours. In the state of Minnesota, they say that if final disposition, so burial or cremation, takes place in 72 hours, the funeral home is not required to do the embalming. So usually the burial happens first. And then if somebody wants to have some type of a service or a lunch or whatever, they can do that afterwards as well.

22:58
But I always encourage people when I'm talking about this, you know, if you're talking to a funeral home, ask them for a direct burial option or immediate burial option, because they're all gonna have it on their price list. And start there, and then you can work your way and add to that as your family needs to. Yes, and on that note, if you can get some of this stuff planned ahead of time, like in a will or in wishes for your family to know,

23:27
It's a good thing because if someone dies unexpectedly, it's really difficult to think through what you want to do and to get everybody on board with the decisions for the deceased. My husband's mother passed away back four or five years ago and we knew that she was ill and we knew that she was going to die.

23:55
but she had told us that she had set up a plan that the paperwork was in her file cabinet through one of the crematory companies in Minnesota. Come to find out that was not the case. So I don't wanna be a downer, death is a difficult thing to talk about, but if you are a smart human being and you don't want your family to have to be making major decisions when they're grieving

24:25
panicked or just not sure what to do, have your plans on paper or in a file in the computer somewhere and people know where to find it because it's really hard to make decisions when you're grieving. You are absolutely correct. And that's one of the things that we talked about on my regular job in my seminars, just that the help that that's going to give a family someday. People don't always realize everything that goes into planning.

24:55
a funeral or a cremation, even a simple cremation service. You know, there's a death certificate that has to be filed and there is information that if we're doing it for ourselves, it'll take us like three minutes to fill it out. We know that information off the top of our heads, but I don't have a clue what my mom and dad's social security numbers are, you know, and we need that for a death certificate. You know, that's just one of the little things. And then you get into planning what type of service you want and the questions that a funeral director is gonna ask a family in order to

25:24
try to help them through that process, it can get to be overwhelming. Especially if a family hasn't slept much, they're sad, they're grieving, and now they're forced to plan a funeral and answer all these questions. It's gonna happen in about a week's time. Yeah, and shock is a real thing. You know when people say, oh she's in shock? Shock is a real thing. It's the way that your body deals with

25:54
and it makes you go numb most of the time. And numb does not work very well when people are asking you questions. No, it doesn't. And you see that all the time. And people don't make the best decisions when they're stressed, when they're shut down. And you said it perfectly, that's just the body's natural way of protecting itself. Yeah, I mean, I wasn't even all that close to my mother-in-law.

26:23
And I was still kind of shocky when she died. And I was like, why am I feeling this way? I wasn't even close with her. But it's that someone is no longer with us thing that, that happens to your brain. It's just weird. And there's so much fear and anxiety around death. And clearly I don't want to die tomorrow. I would like to live to be 99 at least. I'm 54 now.

26:51
But things happen and people get real weird about talking about death. And I feel like we spend all this time planning for babies births and the joy of bringing new life into the world. But death is the opposite end of that and I think that people's lives should be celebrated once they've lived them. Absolutely and it's a hard thing to talk about because

27:22
especially in our culture, we don't, we hide so much of what the death, even when the death occurs with our current funeral practices, whether that be cremation or burial or whatever, but we hide a lot of the fact that the death has even occurred because we don't want to think about it. And to try to think about that ahead of time is a really difficult thing for people to do. And everybody has some different beliefs around it and their spirituality might be a little bit different on what they believe.

27:52
But the fact of the matter is, is that it's something that is inevitable. Um, and most people don't want to plan for it because they don't want to talk about it. They don't want to feel those hard feelings. Yep. Cause it sucks, but it's important to make it easier on the people who are left behind. Okay. So, um, the cemetery itself, the Traverse one or whatever it's called. Um,

28:17
is 10 acres and there's only like 160 or 170 plots that are used right now? Yeah, that's correct. So there's a lot of wide open space. Maybe about three to four acres is kind of the woods surrounding the cemetery. On the original maps, that was all back in the 1800s. Those are all plotted for graves back through the woods. And I think the woods kind of developed and grew up through there.

28:46
We're not using all of that back in the woods. Eventually, if this is something that a lot of people are interested in, um, I would look at, you know, allowing for burials back there. It's beautiful back there in the woods. And I'd like to have walking paths back there someday too. But for the time being, we have so much area that we're able to use, um, just in the open parts of the cemetery. And it's kind of a nice mix because if somebody wants to be buried out in the front side of the cemetery.

29:15
It's all open and it's sunny and that's where the grass is really grown. Um, and, but if somebody wants to be back kind of in the trees, it's not so choked out with trees that you can't have burial back there. It's actually really beautiful. You've seen it. It's beautiful back in there. There's a lot of shade. Um, natural light does come through. Um, a couple that bought the first graves out there, they bought it up on the hill in the trees and if you're out there, um,

29:43
in the evening as the sun is going down it comes right through to that area it's absolutely gorgeous. Yeah I mean the location is is gorgeous there's no question when when I first went there it was a morning I think it was 10 a.m and it was sunny and it was probably May so it wasn't hot yet and the mosquitoes hadn't shown up yet thank god.

30:07
And I drove up in there, parked in that little circle, read the stone, read the little plaque. I was like, oh my God, this is great. I finally found the cemetery I get to hang out at here. And that sounds really weird, but it's true. Um, and it is, it's really pretty. It's very peaceful. It is a lovely spot. Whoever chose that spot for the cemetery did a great thing. Now the, I could rave for days. I'm not going to do that.

30:36
The reason that this is relevant to the podcast, because I feel like you're going to be like, why is she talking about this? Is that green burials are better for the earth than the quote unquote traditional burials. And I think it's funny that we call the traditional burials traditional burials because I feel like the green ones are actually from way back, they should be called the traditional burials, but that's not how we're doing this. So the

31:05
you're not putting cement into the ground. And that takes up room, which means the grave is bigger than it needs to be. The bright shiny lacquer on caskets, I don't know if that ruins the soil, but I bet it doesn't help it. And this is just kinder to the ground that the person is being put in.

31:32
Yeah, exactly. It's, um, yes. Yes. Okay. Yeah. So it, the main goal with any green burial is that we're not using anything that's going to be harmful to the environment and we're going to try to do everything that we can, to be as kind to the, to nature as, as possible. Um, do you want me to read you some stats that I've got for traditional burials? What we're bearing every year?

32:03
All right, so I got this off of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency's website, and I've seen these a number of other places too, but every single year, 827,000 gallons of embalming fluid or formaldehyde, 2,700 tons of copper or bronze or precious metals and casket, 30 million board feet of lumber, 1.6 million tons of concrete and 14,000 tons of steel are buried in the United States.

32:32
every single year from traditional casketed burials. To put that kind of in a more local level, this comes from Mark Harris. He wrote a book in 2007, it's titled Grave Matters. And he took the typical 10 acre cemetery, so that's about the same size as Traverse. But it would contain enough casket wood to construct more than 40 homes, 900 plus tons of casket steel and another 20,000 tons of concrete vault, in vault.

33:01
Um, and then on top of that enough embalming fluid to fill the equivalent of like a backyard swimming pool. And then not only that, but the, all the pesticides, weed killers, the moment to keep that net that cemetery looking, you know, unnaturally green. So, um, we try to get away from all of that when it comes to natural burials and keep things as Nate, as natural as we can and as harmless to the environment as we can do.

33:32
Yep, that's a lot of big numbers right there. That's not great. The other thing that I wanted to touch on is funerals are for the living. The person that has died does not care. They're gone. They are off to their next adventure. They don't care. And so when we think about funerals, we're thinking about it through our perception of what they are.

34:01
not what the person that died's perception would be because they don't have one anymore. Correct. And so it's, it's up, it's up to us to decide how we want to react to the death of someone we love or maybe someone we don't love. Who knows? It could be somebody you don't love that you have to handle this for. And really.

34:27
If you're basing it off of what the person who has died would want, you can't do that. They're not here anymore. So my take on funerals is that I don't attend any. I don't go to funerals because the person that died, if it's someone I loved, they already know that. They knew that. Yeah.

34:51
Yeah, and I'm not gonna be help. I'm not gonna be help at a funeral because the minute somebody cries I will be crying too, even if there's no reason for me to cry. So I don't I don't go to funerals It is not my thing Yeah Yeah, it's a little bit different for everybody, you know And everybody processes that a death of a loved one or like you say a non loved one You know in just in different ways and so People need different things Mm-hmm in it

35:20
It's interesting because we see so much of that in the funeral industry. People that don't want to, don't do any pre-planning ahead of time, sometimes the family members feel burdened having to make all these decisions themselves with no direction of what their mom and dad maybe would have wanted. And others, even if mom and dad made the funeral plans, they might not like that.

35:49
you know, and they might want to do something a little bit different. So your point is correct that funerals are for the living. And I do believe that they should, that the survivor should have some say in what they need to start that healing process after a death has occurred. And that'll look a little bit different for everybody.

36:11
Yeah. When my grandpa died, my mom's dead, I was at that funeral and I had just had a baby like eight, nine weeks before. So my emotions were all over the place. Yeah. And some of the family members kept coming up to my mom and they were just sobbing. My grandfather was well loved and my mom had to comfort them. And I walked away from that funeral just

36:41
pissed off as all hell that my mom had to comfort these people. And my dad was like, why are you so mad? And I said, I said, because it's not mom's job to come to them. It was her dad. And he said to me, honey, he said, everybody deals with death differently. Yeah. And it still bothers me. Who knew?

37:05
And I said, well, that's not fair. And he said, well, it's not fair that your grandfather's dead either. And I was like, well, yes, I know. And he said, your mom's strong. She handled it. She's fine. I was like, yeah, but I still hate everything about it. And he was like, you can hate everything about it. That's fine. So yeah, everyone deals with their feelings differently and sometimes inappropriately.

37:32
And you got to deal with that too. I'm sure you've had that happen. Oh yeah. Yep. Absolutely. There's been some crazy things that have happened at the funeral homes without the doubt. Yeah. Yeah, I bet. And the other thing that I wanted to point out is that you are not a unicorn. There are green burial companies all over the United States. There's not a ton of them, but I know there's at least one in Maine right now. And they are kind of picky.

38:01
they do want to make sure that it's only natural stone. And I'm not even sure whether you can have it engraved and same practices, a shroud or a, a non-treated wood box or whatever. There are other places available. So this is not just St. Peter, Minnesota. There are other places that do this. Absolutely there are. And it's fun to see that and to see what they're doing.

38:28
I've learned a ton in the research that I've done on this. Even before starting this cemetery, my whole idea on green burials came up because the company that I worked for, we needed a new seminar option. And one of the choices was green burials. And I said, hey, I'll take that on. I'd like to do that, learn more about it. And so I put together this presentation on green burials and it's evolved over the last three years. But.

38:58
They're just doing research on different states, what they're doing, what their laws allow them to do. So they're out there, but like you said, they're kind of few and far between. But what's kind of exciting about this is that, you said earlier that the way we, this natural burial should be considered traditional burial because that's how we always used to do funerals. Funerals used to be held in the homes.

39:28
Families participated in the death. Graves were dug usually by the family members. And there was no embalming. There was no fancy casket. There's no fancy headstone. They were all very environmentally friendly. That was only about 150 years ago. So this isn't a new idea. That millennial generation is a generation that really carries the torch on this. They're very environmentally,

39:59
environmentally conscious. They're very green. They're concerned about the environment. But it's interesting because the baby boomer generation kind of rekindled or originated this idea of green funerals and green burials. And that baby boomer generation, you know, they were kind of our nation's first green generation. They helped with organizing Earth Day and things like that. So as you see that

40:28
aging and that's kind of the groups that I'm talking to when I'm doing seminars. They're the ones who are really looking for this as an option. Yeah. And the Baby Boomers may have reinstated this idea, but I think the Gen X parents that me, I'm a Gen X parent. Yeah, I am too. I think that we instilled in our kids.

40:54
the idea that you don't have to accept the status quo. You are free to ask questions and educate yourself. Absolutely, and isn't it fun to see them doing that and not thinking that they have to follow along with what society tells them that they should do? Oh my God, I think I created monsters with my four. They would be like, how does this work? And I would say, I don't know, let's go find out. And if-

41:22
they were old enough to read, I would be like, there's a library at your school. I'm sure they have books. And then when they're old enough to go to the library library, I was like, there's a library down the street. Go research all you want until you can't feed your brain anymore. And not all parents do that, but my parents did it for me. They had the encyclopedia of Britannica in book form on the shelf at the end of the hallway by my bedroom door. And if I had a question and my dad didn't want to answer it or didn't have time,

41:52
He would be like, we bought that whole set of books that has all the answers possible in this moment for you. Go read it. And I did the same thing for my kids. And the internet has made it so much easier for you to say, I don't know, go look it up. With the caveat that you might wanna make sure you know the search terms they're using to look up whatever they're looking up. Absolutely. So I think that we are in a time of

42:21
questioning everything and that's beautiful. It's absolutely beautiful that we have so much information at our fingertips. I love the time that I live in. So I have one more thing for you and then I'm gonna cut you loose. If someone, you're in the funeral industry so you probably know the answer to this. If someone dies of natural causes,

42:49
It is clear that they died of natural causes. Maybe they had cancer, they're in a hospice, and they die. Or for some reason, someone dies in their sleep. Do you have to have, I don't know how to ask this correctly, do you have to have the medical examiner involved? Or can you just call and be like, yep, so-and-so passed away from cancer, that was killing them.

43:17
They are now no longer with us. And then can you just wrap the body and take it to the cemetery and have the funeral? Does there have to be all this bureaucratic red tape involved all the time? Yeah, kind of. So all right, so you asked a bunch of questions in there. Let me start kind of at the beginning. That's good, though.

43:44
Let me start at the beginning and I'll kind of walk through it. Okay? So if somebody dies of natural causes, so maybe they're in a nursing home or a hospital. That's going to be the easy one. They're in a nursing home or a hospital. The hospital is going to get a hold of the funeral home. The funeral home can go out and make the removal. Now, I know I'm not addressing your later questions about the family doing that on their own. I'll get there.

44:13
If somebody dies at home, if they are on a hospice list and on hospice, the medical examiner is not going to have to come out. If they die at home and let's just say that they had a heart attack or didn't wake up in the morning, the medical examiner is going to have to be called. Depending on the county and where you live, sometimes they'll come out. Sometimes they'll actually take the body and do an autopsy.

44:42
A lot of times though, they'll just certify that the death has occurred and the funeral home can make the removal from the place of death. Now as far as a family doing that, a licensed funeral director or recently in Minnesota laws just passed where we can have transfer care specialist make a removal from the place of death.

45:09
but they have to be, they have to go through some different classes, they have to be certified to be a transfer care specialist. So either that person or a funeral director are the only people that can remove a body from where the death has occurred. So you are in Minnesota right now, you're still gonna need a funeral home involved in some way, shape or form. The other thing you need the funeral home for is that a death certificate has to be filed in Minnesota. So.

45:36
Currently in Minnesota, what's done is that the funeral home generates that death certificate. They get the information to the doctor and the doctor signs off on the death certificate and lists the cause of death. And then it's filed with our county. So we need a funeral director for that.

45:59
A family can transport a body after that with a burial transit permit that would be given to them by the funeral home. So if all a family wants to do is have a funeral home, you know, make the removal from the place of death, generate the death certificate and get that filed with our county, and then the family picks the body up from the funeral home and brings it out to the cemetery, they can do that. But...

46:25
I guess they can't really do that because technically in Minnesota, we still need a licensed funeral director at that graveside service for a, uh, full body burial for cremator remains. We don't need a funeral director there, but for, um, a body burial, a funeral director would have to be at that cemetery for the burial. So we need a funeral director in a funeral home for a few of those items.

46:50
Okay, I don't mean to be a pain in the butt, but why? Why does a funeral director have to be at at? What you just said? Director have to be involved in that. Um, essentially I don't have a great answer for that. Um, what I can tell is that We don't want the state of minnesota probably doesn't want somebody dying at home and not having that death recorded Um and certified. No, that's that's not

47:19
That's not what I meant. I wasn't talking about that part. At the actual funeral at the graveside, a funeral director has to be there? Yeah, they have to be there. Why? They have to be at the graveside service. Just to ensure that that body made it into the ground is the best answer I can give you. Okay, that makes sense. Mary, I would say we live in very untrusting times. And so to let people...

47:49
have free rein with that, you know, we're not there yet. I'm not saying that I agree with the law and that I don't question it, but that's the current situation in Minnesota that a funeral director has to be at the graveside service for a body burial. Okay, that's fine. I just didn't know if there was a specific reason why, and I'm always wondering why on everything because this is just who I am. Thank you, because why do you know?

48:17
If you don't want a funeral home involved, you know, you don't necessarily need them there. But funeral directors aren't bad people, you know, they're there to help. Sometimes they get a bad rap. Most of them, their hearts are in the right place. Oh, yes, absolutely. One of our friends, Joe Wagner up in Jordan has the Wagner Funeral Home, I think is what it's called.

48:45
And we're friends with him because he sells wonderful apples and we buy tons of apples for him in the fall. And he is so excited to answer questions like I'm asking you. But he's not doing green burials and you were the one who was doing that. So that's why I'm talking to you. Joe will talk my ear off if I asked him to be on the podcast. I probably never will because he would talk for hours. He's a great guy. I like him a lot.

49:14
Okay, so I think I've asked you all the questions I probably should ask because we're coming up on 50 minutes and I try to keep this to 30 minutes. So Joel, I really, really appreciate you taking the time to talk with me today. This was great. Thank you at Ton Mary for asking me to do this. I really appreciate it. Yeah, have a great day. You too. Thank you.