friends and family will find it disrespectful to their loved one granting their loved one’s ‘down-to-earth’ wish, even if one puts it in one’s will 
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told my kids to sprinkle my ashes around some fruit trees and till me into the garden. ive been telling them that for years and if they dont, ill haunt them till’ they die and kick their butts once i see them again in the afterlife! 
we tilled my father’s ashes into his prized garden after he passed.
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profoundly poignant and beautiful at the same time
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Beautiful paragraph, but cremation seems a terrible waste of fuel and calories, not to mention useable nutrients for the fruit trees. Of course, when bodies are planted 6’ under the roots aren’t likely to reach the nutrients either.
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my father agreed. he wanted us to literally bury him in his garden to save money and to him it was the right thing to do. unfortunately, it’s also illegal. a law i disagree with but understand why.
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In all honesty, as much as loved ones caring about the body of the deceased and wanting them buried in a suit and a nice coffin is just a sentimental thing, wanting to use one’s body to feed the plants is pretty much just as much pure sentiment and feelings. Practically speaking, there’s not much fertilizer value to a human body, especially after the wasting away the accompanies old age or sickness. And actually handling a dead and decaying body is an extraordinarily unpleasant experience, an order of magnitude more so if it’s a human body, to say nothing of the trauma inflicted on the loved ones.
A bit of searching around shows that the typical adult body has a few ounces of K, two pounds of P, four pounds of Ca, and about eight pounds of N. That’s what, $20 worth of fertilizer and lime? And the nitrogen will almost all be released as ammonia, a lot of which which is very likely to either evaporate or wash away. Not to mention all the heavy metals that you’ve bioaccumulated over the decades.
As a test, I suggest anyone wanting to return their bodies to the Earth find some fresh road killed deer and use that carcass to fertilize their garden. It’ll be a memorable experience I suspect. And remember to picture your mom’s face on the deer as the belly ruptures and spills all the rotting contents as you were unceremoniously dragging the carcass to the compost pile and you spend the next hour raking bits and pieces of mom out of the grass so the crows don’t eat her–that’s what your loved ones get to have as their last memory of you. Unless of course they’re unlucky enough that your skull gets floated up to the surface after a bad flood or dragged up by a dog, in which case the grandkids get to have PTSD every time they see a skull in a movie or hear the words “compost pile.” For $20 worth of fertilizer…
It’s pure sentiment and feelings, there’s no real value turning the human body into compost.
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@a_Vivaldi just ewwww…
Was it really necessary to get so graphic.
Why not try writing a B movie horror script instead, the next time you get these kinds of urges. 
I apologize. I wanted to raise the point that “asking to just be buried in the ol’ garden” is actually a really awful thing to demand of one’s loved ones. I didn’t really know how best to make that case other than provide a thought experiment walking through what it actually looks like for the poor family members who get tasked with doing the dirty work with old grandpa’s body.
This is a pretty gross thread anyway, so I figured I wasn’t going much beyond what’s already been talked about.
Hmm, but now that you mention it, we wouldn’t happen to have like a short stories thread in the Lounge or anything? I’ve come across some pretty good black-comedy stuff over the years of farming and gardening. 
I enjoyed the breakdown, pretty enlightening to me. I however have buried roadkill several times to hope to feed my plants. If nothing else it’s a good way to get rid of it.
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i worked a local cattle farm in the early 90’s. i remember a cow dying suddenly. the farmer covered her with about 5 dumps from a loader of barn manure. that pile steamed all summer esp. during a rain. the next spring he spread it out in 1 of his fields. only found bones. nice black compost. wouldnt have needed nearly as much to bury dad well.
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I kid you not, I asked my daughters to please flush my ashes down the toilet. At that point I am gone, and my remains are not going to change anything. Focusing on them is just navel gazing. But they understand what I believe and how I feel; that what really remains of me is on the lives that I touched, theirs in particular.
They know what I asked, what they decide is up to them. Won’t bother me one bit and they know it. if they decide to put me in the garden and that act makes them happy, I’m happy.
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i agree it is a bit macabre and can result in PTSD, especially if one’s folks have never been to another country.
lived half of my life in a developing nation , but in a city where there seemed to be more mcdonald outlets per unit land area anywhere in the world. So was myself horrified(as a younger person) when visited a far flung area there where the practice is the only option.
I evidently see it differently now.
re: roadkill, will make use of it too if crows and coyotes don’t get to it first, of course it depends on how much land(and elbow grease) i have. Moreover, if it died in my tract of land i still will need to deal with it anyway.
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What does all of this discussion of human burial have to do with the title of this topic? It should be moved to a separate appropriate topic to avoid misleading viewers.
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some people find human wastes(pee and poo) being analogous to human remains as part of carbon/nitrogen cycle.
i started this thread, and admittedly also the hoopla pertaining to the analogy.
maybe just have to flag myself(or someone do it for me) for the moderators to pass judgment on
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I believe sentiments and feelings are the most important things in our lives.
$20 worth of fertilizer! Of course it is about sentiment and love in how we treat the bodies of our dead loved ones. However, you forgot to consider the environmental and dollar cost of cremation and conventional burial in a cemetery. Around me there are cemeteries that haven’t added any bodies or even been visited for a century, but it is illegal to use the land for anything else. Every year more land is locked up this way.
If you took that money used for coffins and land management for perpetuity into the education of your grandchildren, it would represent a good bit more then adding $20 to your will. Maybe one of them could even hold onto the house where the apple tree is that your body was buried under… and eat the apples.
I think you need to put more than hard data into your calculations on this one. How do you want your family to honor your life when you die? How do you want remaining inheritance to be invested?
I’m into the last quarter of my life, and it’s even later than that, given how fast time moves now. It can change your perspective. I want my son to dispose of my body as cheaply as possible but however he finds the most comforting. I’m sentimental that way- there is no practical reason to care about what happens when we are gone- that’s all about sentiment and feelings.
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bury me in the compost heap, plant big tomatoes on top.
I use a small jug for peeing when I’m out doing garden stuff. when I am watering early in the season I add some to a big watering can and dilute it and water the soil with it.
it doesn’t seem to smell at all, watered down.
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In Kansas, you can be buried on your own property, but you have to be in the ground in under 24 hours.
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speaking of which-- Kansas immortalized this song(of mortality).
have to say would rather have my dust underground and not in the wind
as the answer my friend, shouldn’t be blowing in the wind
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It does seem strange to see a song like this outside of Kansas. These people playing this are friends of friends. @randyks likely bumps into the guys playing that at the grocery store.
Try this band who are also from around here. One thing for sure if they are from Kansas or Missouri you will know it
Things get a little wild in Kansas city and Lawrence but that is more @Olpea @39thparallel areas. I like it out here where cows wonder my roads. @TurkeyCreekTrees lives just a short distance from me. He got tired of Nebraska and became my neighbor. @PaulinKansas6b @ctduckhunter and many others may know some of these people like the band Kansas.
There are plenty of songs about the state and not all are rock
Well you decide what you like and there are many versions
In the middle of the country lots happens here when it does but its seldom much happens at all
Carrie Nation was a character of the day
John Brown well known here
An hour from here
https://www.stjosephmo.gov/362/Jesse-James-Home
One of the james hideouts was 15 minutes from my house.
James brothers road with and learned from Quantrill
@KSprairie @KS_razerback i think that helps people to understand things better but there is much more i could have said. If something else needed said please do .
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That’s not necessarily accurate. My young niece died within the last year. She was buried on her parents property in KS, and it was over a week after she had passed that she was buried on the property. Perhaps it’s different in different counties, I don’t know.
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