‘Ashes to Ashes’ Concept Helps Quirky Vermont Farm Survive

Just up the hill from the Gaines dairy farm stands a small building that looks a lot like a sugar shack, the kind of thing many Vermont farmers rely on to supplement their income.

But this one-story building houses a human crematory run by a couple of former back-to-the-landers who say they want to provide a personalized end-of-life service.

The owners, Jim and Ellen Curley, say their new venture is a small family business that will provide options to the community and also help their neighbors’ seventh-generation dairy farm survive.

“I view it as a service to my generation and the older generation,” Jim Curley said. “We’re a low-volume small scale operation with a beautiful setting.”

Diversification is practically a necessity for small farms these days -- particularly small dairy farms. Milk prices hit a 25-year low last year.

“This is where the hope is for farmers,” said Mark Kastel, a farmer in Lafarge, Wis., and an independent farm-policy analyst. “With the present trend line, if you just produce commodities and you’re a modest-sized farm, you’re not going to be here a few years down the road.”

The Curleys are no farmers; Jim is a retired education consultant, Ellen is a hospice nurse. The couple were looking to start a family business when they got the idea of opening the crematory. First, they asked the Gaineses if they could use a small wooded spot of land across the road from pasture.

“We’ve had a lot of people ask us to do different things here over the years,” Jackie Gaines said. “Someone wanted to put a warehouse-type of building up; someone wanted to put a building for storage up.”

But a crematory?

The Gaineses said yes.

Funeral homes and burial services are big business in Vermont, but cremation is a growing choice. About 40% of Vermonters choose cremation, according to the Funeral Consumers Alliance, a national consumers’ group.

The Gaineses’ farm has about 200 acres in Vermont and Massachusetts where the family milks 65 cows; grows hay, corn and alfalfa; and runs a maple sugar operation. In addition to the monthly rent the family collects on the easement used by the Curleys, Jackie Gaines also runs a dog-boarding business on the farm, housing as many as seven animals for $9 a day.

Adding the crematory might make a critical difference to the farm’s survival, even though there are no guarantees.

“The town was concerned with the aesthetic part of a crematory in town, and how that would fit in,” said Jackie Gaines. “I told them that it would generate some income for us, which would enable us to continue to keep this land as a farm intact for the next generation.”

But it’s not only dairy farms that are struggling; many other small operations are as well.

Winifred Shulteis, co-owner of Quaker Valley Orchards, said declining apple prices led her family to add other crops and a guesthouse to their 220-acre apple orchard near Gettysburg, Pa.

Running the farm on apple profit alone was a struggle, so the family added blackberries, strawberries and vegetables to their offerings. They also converted an in-law apartment to a one-bedroom guesthouse that rents for $85 a night.

Learning to be an innkeeper is worth it, Shulteis said, to keep her family on the farm.

“It’s a way of life. It’s a beautiful farm,” she said. “We have young children that we’re raising, and it’s a great place to raise kids.”

For the Gaineses, although the notion of a crematory on the farm elicited startled jokes from relatives and passers-by, the family was not deterred.

“Having a lot of animals, we do come in contact with death,” Jackie Gaines said.

The result: a neat, rectangular building just up a dirt road in the woods close to Route 5 as it approaches the Massachusetts border. Inside the building is a large machine -- known as a “retort” -- where bodies are cremated at 1,750 degrees and sent into the air as vapor. Across the road, cows graze in large fields.

The Curleys’ crematory is the seventh in Vermont. They want to capitalize on the market in nearby western Massachusetts, which has a much lower cremation rate than Vermont’s.

Vermont Blessings has done one cremation so far. The Curleys woo customers with promises of privacy and personal service.

Cremation in Vermont can range from $650 to as much as $2,200. Vermont Blessings charges $1,200 to pick up the body, complete the necessary paperwork, cremate the remains and return a container of ashes. Jim Curley, who has a doctorate in education, is also working to obtain a funeral director’s license so he can offer memorial services, though he has no intention of doing embalming.

For Jackie Gaines, the new business is a welcome addition that just might help save the farm from being turned into housing or stores.

“The plight of farms is horrible,” she said.