Showing posts with label green cemetery. Show all posts
Showing posts with label green cemetery. Show all posts

Monday, March 8, 2010

Cedar Brook Burial Ground, Inc. Mission Statement

  • Insure the respectful treatment of the deceased and the family.
  • Preserve the area in its natural state.
  • Follow the tenets of green burial practices along with a sustainable forestry policy.

Cedar Brook Burial Ground is open year round.

Planning a funeral - others . . . or yours

Where does one start? What questions need to be answered? These books will help start the conversation and answer many of your questions.

From the authors of Grave Expectations, Carmen Flowers and Sue Bailey:

"Life is such a rich, complicated, joyous, mysterious wild ride. Everyone has stories to tell and lessons to pass on, and what better way to do that than when you're alive? It was your life; your funeral is the one time you can do and say absolutely whatever you want.

As of this writing, there is no alternative to dying. Since there's no getting out of it, why not go ahead and plan your fantasy going "away" party?"

Carmen Flowers and Sue Bailey will be the guest speakers at the Annual Meeting on 10/31/2009 of the Consumers Funeral Alliance of Maine at The Highlands in Topsham, Maine. The meeting is open to the public at a cost of $10/person.

There will be an outstanding panel of people who have done home funerals and natural burials. They will share their stories and answer questions. Resources available include information about Maine's two natural cemeteries and Chuck Lakin's display of his alternative wood caskets. Peter McHugh of Cedar Brook Burial Ground will be available to answer questions.

Grave Matters by Mark Harris is also an excellent source of information.

"Whatever Happened to ‘Dust to Dust’?
You Can Still Find It in Green Burial.

By the time Nate Fisher was laid to rest in a woodland grave sans coffin in the final season of Six Feet Under, Americans all across the country were starting to look outside the box when death came calling.

Grave Matters follows a dozen such families who found in “green” burial a more natural, more economic and ultimately more meaningful alternative to the tired and toxic send-off on offer at the local funeral parlor."

Monday, August 31, 2009

DOWN TO EARTH

Green cemeteries take a final step back to nature
By JOHN RICHARDSON, Staff Writer, Portland Press Herald - July 19, 2008
Cedar Brook Burial Ground, a green cemetery

After a lifetime of recycling, composting, turning down the thermostat and trying to eat local organic food, some people might not want to leave their bodies to be filled with a chemical preservative and buried in steel and concrete, or even cremated in a gas-fired furnace.

Now they have a couple more options.

Maine's two green cemeteries -- natural burial grounds that don't allow embalming or steel caskets -- are open for business. And they're getting some.

For the rest of the story

Sunday, July 5, 2009

Entering Cedar Brook Burial Grounds


Vistors are welcome to tour the grounds.

For a tour of the grounds or a brochure, call Joyce Foley, President, at 207.637.2085, email at CBBG@MaineGreenCemetery.com or request information by mail: Cedar Brook Burial Ground, 175 Boothby Rd, Limington, ME 04049-3019

Monday, June 29, 2009

Work continues at the Joshua Small Cemetery


The wonderful fieldstone wall surrounding the cemetery is being repaired. Some of the stones have, over time, dropped from the wall and are being carefully fitted back in place. There is ongoing maintenance to the grounds within and around the cemtery.

The cemetery is available to visitors to Cedar Brook Burial Ground.

Monday, March 9, 2009

A Family Undertaking

What is old is often new again. Elizabeth Westrate's "A Family Undertaking" uncovers a growing social trend: the home funeral movement. More often, Americans are choosing to do it themselves when it comes to burying loved ones and easing their own grief. Far from being a radical innovation, however, keeping funeral rites in the family or among friends is exactly how death was handled for most of pre-twentieth century America.

Click here for more information

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Green funerals bring back old ideas

Some regard cemeteries as tranquil anterooms to the afterlife. Others see them as hazardous-waste sites, full of chemically treated wood and steel caskets, formaldehyde embalming fluid and concrete burial vaults.

The grass could be much greener on the other side. . .

By William Loeffler, TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Monday, February 9, 2009

Friday, April 25, 2008

Cedar Brook Burial Ground: a Green Option

Cedar Brook Burial Ground is now open. Visitors are welcome to tour the Grounds.

Please call ahead to be sure Peter McHugh will be available to guide you. 207.637.2085




Paths with memorial stones and traditional plots are available.

Prices & Environmental considerations

For additional information contact Peter McHugh at 207.637.2085

For driving directions:
Call
207.637.2085 or email
Or use 175 Boothby Rd,
Limington, ME to get directions online.
Or click here for map & directions from Portland, ME
Click here for map & directions from Hampton, NH Toll booth

Sunday, November 18, 2007

Dust to dust (and no more) Limington’s green cemetery

by Cliff White, Staff Writer, Gorham Westbrook Gazette, November 16, 2007

Peter McHugh rides his all-terrain vehicle across the 2.1 acres of 150-acre property he has recently devoted to creating Maine’s first green cemetery.

He points out prospective locations for burial sites – little spaces of cleared land marked only by brown fallen leaves amidst a forest of mostly bare trees. . . .

Maine law allows small family graveyards no larger than a quarter-acre without the need for a permit, as long as no bodies are buried within 25 rods (413 feet) from the nearest land used for public recreation or potable water source. However, some years ago, McHugh
decided he wanted to create a cemetery that gives others the option to be buried in a more natural fashion than otherwise available.

“I wanted to give people the option to be buried in the way they prefer,” McHugh
says. “If they prefer a more environmentally friendly, less costly method of burial, then they should have that option.”

The town of Limington
has no local ordinances regarding the development of commercial cemeteries, so McHugh needed only to apply to the state. In September, McHugh registered his cemetery – named the Cedar Brook Burial Ground after a local topographical feature – with the Department of Health and Human Services. McHugh says it took only about 10 days after the submission of his application to receive notice of his registration as a cemetery. . . .

McHugh
allows customers to choose their own space in his cemetery, and to mark the spot with any local stone, which he says he will allow to be engraved. He says he will allow unlimited visitations by anyone interested. . . .

“Last year 22,500 cemeteries across the US buried 827,060 gallons of embalming fluid, 104,272 tons of steel, 2,700 tons of copper and bronze, 30-plus million board feet of hardwoods and 1.6 million tons of concrete,” Christensen says. “In purely ecological terms, how we bury our dead is unsustainable.”

Mark Harris, author of the book “Grave Matters,” an examination of alternative methods of burial, said green cemeteries are becoming more popular in America because they are easier on the environment. . . .

Green burials can also help save a different kind of green – the kind found in people’s wallets.

“Between charges for embalming, a metal casket, a vault, a headstone, the cemetery charges for a plot and the opening and closing of a grave, and the fee for perpetual care and maintenance of the gravesite
, funeral costs today can easily run $10,000 or more,” Harris said. “Green burials, in contrast, run in the low thousands of dollars, and can be less depending on personal choices. So the cost differential is huge.”

McHugh
says saving on funeral costs is a significant factor in choosing a green burial ground.

“It’s a simpler, less costly way to bury your loved one,” McHugh
says. “Traditional funerals can get very expensive. I wanted to give people another option.”

For complete article

Sunday, October 28, 2007

Maine a pioneer in green cemeteries


Peter McHugh’s 150-acre tree farm already contains a small graveyard, and now he has Cedar Brook Burial Ground, about 20 miles west of Portland, ready to do business as a green cemetery.

There are seven green cemeteries in the United States, according to national experts.

A green cemetery contains people buried in simple graves, usually in natural, forested areas. Bodies are wrapped in shrouds or placed in wicker or pine coffins. The cemeteries do not accept bodies containing formaldehyde or other embalming chemicals, and they don't accept metal coffins or use concrete vaults.

They also don't have manicured, fertilized lawns or polished granite monuments.


From an article by John Richardson, Staff Writer, October 28, 2007 in the Maine Sunday Telegram

Note:
2.25 acres are devoted to Cedar Brook Burial Ground 2.25 acres devoted to the cemetery with more acorage available when the need arises.

Friday, October 26, 2007

First Green Cemetery to open in Maine

According to the Funeral Consumers Alliance of Maine, Cedar Brook Burial Ground is the first green burial site in New England.

Sunday, October 7, 2007

Cedar Brook Burial Ground is now open

There are very few Green Burial site in the United States.

Cedar Brook Burial Ground is the first "Green Cemetery" in Maine. Each burial site will have a specific location. Visitors will be able to find the resting place of the loved one using global positioning equipment.

For a tour of Cedar Brook Burial Ground or more information please call me at 207 637 2085 or e-mail me CBBG@MaineGreenCemetery.com

Joyce Foley, President, CBBG

Friday, October 5, 2007

Cedar Brook Burial Grounds

Work is underway creating a green cemetery in Limington, Maine.

Monday, October 1, 2007

Contact information

Contact Joyce Foley, Presdient
Cedar Brook Burial Ground, Inc.
175 Boothby Road
P.O. Box 511
Limington, ME 04049-0511
207.637.2085
Email: CBBG@MaineGreenCemetery.com



Visitors welcome year round