permaculture

[Woody Wodraska <wodraska@mac.com>]

EXCERPT FROM THE AUTHOR’S LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT

            This is how I wish you to dispose of my meat body.  I’m  
assuming I have died on the farm, without benefit of outside experts,  
and that we can keep it that way.  No doctors, undertakers or other  
butchers allowed on the premises.  Do what you have to do to get my  
death officially noted, but don’t let them take my “remains” away.  No  
no no.  For the most part my body has been built up of the produce of  
Aurora Farm, and it’s time to give back.

            Please have someone turn the most recent cow stall  
compost pile over onto the space next to it.  This will leave a nice,  
damp, wormy place at grade level where you are to dig my grave.  Not  
too deep.  This grave is to be built UP, not dug down.  Now bring  
what’s left of me down there to the compost yard.  Should be easy, for  
I never have weighed much and a lot less now.  No box.  No concrete  
“vault” for God’s sake.  Just a shroud of some sort, or maybe my barn  
coveralls, which are probably on their way to being compost anyway.   
Lay me down, there among my friends the worms and say a few words,  
play a little music, then cover me lightly with soil and all hands  
grab a fork and rebuild the compost pile over me.  Add the Biodynamic  
preparations.

            A year or so later go ahead and use the compost on the  
gardens.  Whatever good energies I’ve managed to bestow on it will  
spread and diffuse into the landscape.  Don’t scrape past the grade  
level now.  My bones will still be there and we don’t want to startle  
anyone.  Build another pile on top of me.  And so on.  Dust to dust,  
ashes to ashes, meat to worm to compost to garden.  And so on.

            Thank you.

Woody Wodraska
wodraska@mac.com
Free chapters from
"Deep Gardening: Soul Lessons from 17 Gardens" at
http://www.soulmedicinejourney.com/Book.html



On May 20, 2009, at 1:21 PM, permaculture-request@lists.ibiblio.org  
wrote:

> composting people