Back to Ground Mission Statement: Providing a natural cemetery that utilizes sustainable burial practices and stewards the natural environment while nurturing healing, reflection, and sanctuary with nature.
GREETINGS CONSERVATION BURIAL ENTHUSIASTS:
We thank you for your patience as it’s been a long time between newsletters, but we’re sure to change that eventually!
The Back to Ground Board has been very busy working on our organizational scaffolding and infrastructure with a refiling of the long-er tax forms the IRS required. We’ve been hammering out policies and programs, sorting out financial components, creating a working budget, creating a beautiful springboard website, and planning, dreaming and beginning explorations into fund-raising and land acquisition!
Please feast your eyes on our NEW website (backtoground.org/home) brought to you by our Board Members Pete and Jenni, and Grayson, son of our Board member, Jennifer. Here you can meet all the members of our Board, learn more about Conservation Burial and do some of your own digging around in our updated RESOURCE LIBRARIES. This is a living digital document, so please visit regularly to see updates and changes, such as the one on our EVENTS page:
This month, several members will participate in a Death Education Fair at one of our Sister Conservation Cemeteries in Verona, Wisconsin at Natural Path Sanctuary. (https://naturalpathsanctuary.org/event/natural-path-sanctuary-death-education-market/) The event is on Saturday, 21.June.2o25. from noon to 3pm. Along with numerous vendors in the Death Care Communities, there will be food and live music. This is an excellent opportunity to visit the nearest Conservation Burial Cemetery to Johnson County, Iowa, tour the natural cemetery and learn so much more about natural burial by immersing yourself in this living ecosystem of remembrance. Members of Casper Creek Natural Cemetery of Galena, IL, will also be present at a table. There you can talk to Andra for an introduction to another Conservation Cemetery in a neighboring state. If you decide to attend this remarkable event, consider carpooling to spare natural resources–an act of living your love for the earth–and to have more fun!
Last month was our THIRD YEAR participating in Bur Oak Land Trust’s Prairie Preview event–their 4o th year! With dozens of other ecologically-beneficial organizations in attendance, four of us were busy at our table educating attendees on natural burial. We aired our new website on Jennifer’s laptop, handed out beautiful take-away information cards, business cards and stickers, and answered dozens of questions. We also drew attention from the crowds with our new Back to Ground logo banner, designed by Jennifer, and used our “Natural Burial Barbie” and “Conventional Burial Barbie” dioramas to demonstrate the differences between traditional and conventional burial practices.
Part of this year’s Prairie Preview included a wonderful talk by Robin Wall Kimmerer, acclaimed author (Gathering Moss, Braiding Sweetgrass, The Serviceberry), Environmental Science Professor and Potawatomi Botanist. Thank you, Bur Oak, for bringing this beautiful teacher to Iowa City!
OUR NEXT MOVES, among many, will include a deeper dive into Educational Outreach public talks, to help fuel our fund-raising efforts, which leads us to the big one: land acquisition! Do you have 4o - 2oo acres of land that maybe you’ve had in the family for years and have longed to be assured that it will never fall into development, but would instead retain or even restore its historical native ecosystem? Do you know someone whose land parcel would make an outstanding jewel of a living memorial? Conservation Burial creates a preserve by integrating native trees, flowers, flora and fauna with the natural processes of nutrient sharing from all our beloved dead buried there. Without interference from grave vaults, metal and hardwood caskets, and embalming fluid decomposition takes its natural course. Walking the living land allows family and friends to continue their relationship with those who have given their bodies to the natural environment. Forever. While Back to Ground is still waiting on our tax certifications, we are ready to accept monetary donations or land, which can retroactively be issued a receipt for tax deduction purposes once the forms have been released. Please consider us in your annual giving, or help us build Iowa’s first Conservation Cemetery with a donation of land.
Back to Ground Conservation Cemetery is very excited to announce our new Board member–Chris Jensen–who has served on the board of Bur Oak Land Trust for years, including these last two years as its President. We are so pleased that Chris brings his long-standing interest in conservation, and years serving the Land Trust which will help strengthen the collaboration between our two organizations on our Natural Burial Cemetery project.
We are looking forward to seeing you before the year is out at events on the land and to talk with you about the benefits of natural burial that serves to create a land preserve for the communities of Iowa! Consider that the conservation land is created through burials, but the land itself is a beautiful container where loved ones' bodies gift the earth with every nutrient contained within them. Every tree, grass, flower, fungi, creature of the water, land and sky benefit from the natural processes of this form of body disposition. As Kimmerer talks about in Braiding Sweetgrass and in her wonderful talks, it is an act of reciprocity that serves both the givers and the receivers. In a Conservation Burial Cemetery, the lines blur as to who receives and who gives.
Becky Hoffbauer
Co-Founder
Back to Ground Conservation Cemetery