July 2026

The forest is a symphony of summer! The birds sing to each other in warning and in love as plants bend toward the arcs of light dappling the ground. Opportunistic bugs hover closely by and mushrooms break the surface of the soil in clusters of celebration. Families place markers and host celebrations of life under the green canopy and we welcome the new residents to our forest with poetry, song, stories and the ever present scraping of shovels in fresh turned earth. We have a packed newsletter for you this month!

Keep reading to learn more about:

• “Living for the Dead” in Burlington at the First Unitarian Universalist Society in Burlington with guest worship leader Michelle Hogle Acciavatti

• From Earth to Earth: The Lost Art of Dying in America Screening & Q&A in Middlebury

• August Cemetery Tours

• Cemetery Stewardship Day

• 3rd Anniversary Celebration Announcement

• Ecology Minute

• We answer a frequently asked question about natural burial and organ or tissue donations and autopsies.

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July Events

Sunday July 26th at 10am join founder and head cemeterian Michelle Hogle Acciavatti at the First Unitarian Universalist Society in Burlington for “Living for the Dead”. Our dead ask two things of us: that we remember them and that we live. The families Michelle has met at Vermont Forest Cemetery have taught her that grief is a way of loving and that mourning includes gratitude and joy. The stories shared during the service will highlight how we carry our dead with us even in the most ordinary acts of living.

Can’t make it in person? Join the talk via livestream!

Join President of the Board and Community Outreach Coordinator Jim Hogle on Wednesday July 29th 2:30pm - 4:00pm in Middlebury at Elderly Services Inc. for a screening of the award winning documentary From Earth to Earth: The Lost Art of Dying in America followed by a Q&A to answer all of your natural burial questions.

If you’d like to have this documentary brought to your town, please email Jim Hogle at info@cemetery.eco

Tour season has been in full swing at the cemetery! Each tour we host, we learn more about the ever growing community of natural burial advocates, environmental leaders and artists from across the state who choose to walk the forest with us. We have two tours during the month of August:

Come meet founder and head cemeterian Michelle Hogle Acciavatti for a two hour tour focusing on the stories of the forest and the vision of the cemetery all while answering your questions about VFC! Our Founders tour will be on Saturday August 1st, 2pm - 4pm.

Walk with cemeterian Bailey McLaughlin for a ninety minute tour through the grounds of the cemetery. You’ll learn about the ecology of the forest and our conservation goals, stories of those residing in the cemetery and have all of your natural burial questions answered. Our Cemeterian Tour will take place on Saturday August 8th from 10am - 11:30am.

We had a fantastic Cemetery Stewardship Day this July! We were able to tackle the spread of invasive Wall Lettuce (Mycelis muralis) that has begun to spread through our cemetery. Wall Lettuce is prolific at seeding, one plant can spread as many as 10,000 seeds during one season but luckily the root system is very shallow and they are easily removed by hand. With our incredible crew of volunteers we were able to remove almost all of the plants in our Sheepfold as well as about a quarter of the population in our Spruce Grove. Thank you to all our volunteers who made this possible!

We will be hosting our next Cemetery Stewardship Day on Sunday August 2nd from 10am - 2pm. Come spend an afternoon with our incredible volunteer community in the forest!

It’s time to mark your calendars!

Join us on Saturday October 10th for our 3rd Anniversary Celebration! This is one of our biggest events of the year where we host artists, musicians, labyrinth walks and poetry reads, tours and more! If you haven’t visited the cemetery in a while, our Anniversary Celebration is a great opportunity to see how much we’ve grown. Including our Cottage for Connection which will be installed by the end of this month!

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Ecology Minute

Coyotes (Canis latrans)

We are home to a small population of coyotes that live in and around the Roxbury State Forest that travel through the cemetery. We’ve seen them on our game cameras, like the image below, and also found their scat marking trails through our Spruce Grove. But how did these incredible creatures get here?

Coyotes are a relatively new canid on the scene in the state of Vermont. The migration out of their traditional range in the prairies and deserts of Central North America and Mexico began at the turn of the century where they traveled up into Canada and began mixing with the local wolf population. It was during the 1940’s that the coyotes we know today descended into the green mountain state. Coyotes are typically solitary hunters but as more wolf DNA has been mixed in throughout the generations more coyotes have begun creating small packs and similar social structures to their wolf counterparts in the north. They play an important role within our ecosystem as mesocarnivores, able to prey on raccoons, rodents, skunks, foxes, geese and very young white tailed deer. After the next rainfall, see if you can spot their tracks on the muddy trails!

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Frequently Asked Questions

We get many questions on tours and during our Q&A’s and wanted to take a moment to answer a few of our most common questions.

What happens after organ/tissue donation/autopsy?

All of the above are consistent with natural burial, though some extra preparation of the body may be necessary. Conventional burial preparation after these procedures uses plastic, while in natural burial we use cotton, cornstarch and/or compostable butcher paper. Our founder, Michelle Hogle Acciavatti, can assist families and funeral directors who wish to prepare a body for natural burial and can provide appropriate containers. Please be aware that organ donation requires that the death occur in or in the way to the hospital and that donors must be under 65 and not on medication. Please reach out with any questions.

What about after medical research donation?

Bodies that are donated to medical research are cremated before being returned to the family. We would never want someone to have to choose between natural burial and donating their body. Life Forest in Hillsborough, NH is a conservation burial ground dedicated to the burial of cremated remains.

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Those of us who work at Vermont Forest Cemetery are committed to providing the best possible service to our community, and encourage you to contact us at any time with questions, concerns or ideas at info@cemetery.eco.

We value your continued support and are deeply indebted to those of you who have volunteered to help build trails, participate in burials, or just bear witness for those experiencing loss; for those who chose to make tax deductible donations, and to those who have chosen to support us through advanced purchases of burial rights. Thank you for your continued support!

We hope to see many of you at the cemetery.  It is a beautiful place in all seasons, made all the more beautiful by the stories it holds.