The Spirit of Green Burial with Suzanne Kelly – April 22, 2025
April 22 @ 4:00 pm - 5:30 pm
Join us on Earth Day to talk about Green Burial!
April 22, 2025
4:00-5:30pm
Jim & Lisa’s Circle Home
100 Wurts Street
Kingston, NY 12401
Green Burial 101: Dying, naturally
Greening death begins with waking up to the matter of death itself.
We once disposed of our dead in earth-friendly ways-no chemicals, biodegradable containers, dust to dust. But over the last 150 years death care has become a toxic, polluting, and alienating industry in the United States.
Today, people are slowly waking up to the possibility of more sustainable and less disaffecting death care, reclaiming old practices in new ways, in a new age.
Join Hudson Valley author and farmer, Suzanne Kelly, for an earth day conversation about the Green Burial Movement. Her 2015 book, Greening Death: Reclaiming Burial Practices and Restoring Our Tie to the Earth traces the philosophical and historical backstory to this awakening, captures the passionate on-the-ground work of the Green Burial Movement, and explores the obstacles and other challenges getting in the way of more robust mobilization. As the movement lays claim to greener, simpler, and more cost-efficient practices, something even more promising is being offered up—a tangible way of restoring our relationship to nature.
Admission is free although donations are always appreciated, but we ask you to register in advance by clicking here.
Suzanne Kelly, Owner & Grower
Suzanne began Green Owl Farm in 2013, yearning for a deeper connection with the land. She also felt called to apply at least some of the theory she engaged with in the classroom, teaching Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies for over a decade, out in the field. Up until then she’d been a self-taught, backyard vegetable grower without any formal farm training. But she was buoyed by the number of market gardens growing intensively on small parcels, especially in urban areas, and made the leap — practically overnight. For the first few years she grew only garlic. A lot of it. Before long, she branched out into other specialty herbs: turmeric, ginger, and saffron. Later, she developed a line of value added products born from these herbs and fulfilled the long-held wish of establishing a vegetable CSA.
When she’s not farming, you can find her stewarding the Town of Rhinebeck Cemetery where she works as the part-time administrator. After nearly fifteen years of green burial advocacy and collective effort, Rhinebeck’s Natural Burial Ground opened in 2014.