SCHEDULE - Cemetery Service Learnings - 2016
COMING SOON!!
PAST SERVICE LEARNINGS:
SP2015 - Open to students of Soil 205, Introduction to Soil Science (and others on request)
LIVING CEMETERY PROJECT: "From Urn to Fern" - preparing a forest area for fern establishment
Ride the bus with us down to OSU's Sustainable Cemetery Studies Lab site in our Lane County cemetery research and practicum area. Join project leader Cynthia Beal (founder of the Natural Burial Company/OSU lecturer on Sustainable Cemetery Management) to help solve cemetery-related landscape challenges involving soil, turf, vegetation and habitat. This project involves opening up the understory and preparing the grounds of an abandoned fir woodlot adjacent to the cemetery for urn and other shade-suitable native plantings in a future natural burial area. You will do physical work with shovels, rakes, loppers, machetes, and more! Limited to 6 students.
WT2015 - Open to students of Soil 205, Introduction to Soil Science (and others on request) - COMPLETED
LIVING CEMETERY PROJECT: "From Wood to Wall" - berm building for habitat hedgerows
Ride the bus with us down to OSU's Sustainable Cemetery Studies Lab site in our Lane County cemetery research and practicum area. Join project leader Cynthia Beal (founder of the Natural Burial Company/OSU lecturer on Sustainable Cemetery Management) to help solve cemetery-related landscape challenges involving soil, turf, vegetation and habitat. This project involves creating a Hugelkultur (look it up) barrier downslope of the cemetery to catch water and host a future habitat hedgerow. You will do physical work with shovels, rakes, loppers, machetes, and more! Limited to 6 students.
Spring 2014
“From Stone to Soil” – Cemetery Quest Activity; the “Story of Stones”
Living Cemetery Project: The “Story of Stones” (Week 5 - Saturday, May 3)
Your participation in this session will help build the “Story of the Stones” Cemetery Quest and create the natural resource and cultural documentation for the "Oregon Cemetery Box". We’ll travel by OSU van to a Living Cemetery project site west of Cox Butte, in Lane County. We’ll take some time at the cemetery to discuss the emerging natural burial movement as well as what's covered in the "Introduction to Sustainable Cemetery Management" course, now offered online. For the soil activity portion of the session, we’ll identify environmental, physical and cultural characteristics of the soil, the vegetation and landscape it supports, and headstones that comprise its parent material, looking at weathering processes. For the service learning portion you’ll be doing one or more of the following: map documentation, species ID, moving soil, clipping, raking, digging, sweeping, picking up or moving brush.
Note: This is a rain-or-shine event – you sign-up, you come! Limited to 6 students, first come, first served. Meet-up in the Crops parking lot, west side, approx 9:00 am. Travel time each way is 1/2 hour. Time at cemetery is 4 hours. Total outing time is 5.5-6 hours. Wear weather-appropriate gear and shoes, including an umbrella. BYO water bottle, drinks, snacks and lunch. Bring good work gloves!
NOTES:
1. The “Cemetery Quest”: Cemetery Quests are place-based activities in the cemetery that connect the cemetery visitor with the history and the natural resources around it. These Quests are intended for use in “the Oregon Coast Quests Book”, designed to encourage the public exploration of natural and cultural areas, published by OSU Hatfield Marine Science Center. Cemetery Quest activities use service learning students to gather the information used to create and improve the Cemetery Quests.
2. The “Oregon Cemetery Box”: Cemetery Boxes are a new idea taken from the “World Affairs Council” program at the Oregon Historical Society. Once completed, the “Cemetery Boxes” will be activity and information kits on a particular cemetery, covering its prominent cultural and ecological features, and available for educational groups to use during self-guided cemetery tours. Cemetery Box activities use service learning students to create and improve Cemetery Box activities.
3. About the Site - the cemetery we're visiting is about 7.5 miles south of Monroe, Oregon. See if you can locate it on Google Maps. It has a line of very large trees running East-West and it's directly southwest of Cox Butte. Kudos (and maybe a prize) for being able to tell us something about the site when we arrive!