Wife just received a call from an old friend concerning a local garden club to which we belong. No one had heard from the Program Director for a while, so this friend called her to see how December's flower arranging program was progressing. The person in charge of programs informed this friend that her husband had died last week and she has been busy getting permits and securing a backhoe in order to bury the old man on their property. I guess the husband's body has been in a box on the backyard frozen until the hole can be dug. I don't know what permits are required for a "backyard burial" but I guess there must be something that has to be filed. They have a small farm and I didn't think anything was necessary if you had enough property but the grave must need to be registered or something. Anyway, the friend said the woman was just taking everything in stride and would get back to work whenever she got her husband in the ground. The person involved is a big composter and recycler so I am surprised she didn't compost the old man, but perhaps she is going to bury him and plant a tree over him or something. Wife said the couple had been together for 45 years but had only been formally married for the past few years. They have no children.
Now you make me wonder what's required here. I have a graveyard on my property and the most recent burial was 1975. The properties on my street have tombstones right at roadside, but I've not noticed them expand since I've been here. I'm glad the widow isn't taking it too hard. Can one assume that there's at least a cursory check to make sure "natural causes," or are "Yukon Divorces" just part of the territory?
I really don't know if there is a death certificate required except for insurance and Social Security (if they have insurance). I know there have been a lot of homestead burials here, but I don't think most are registered anywhere outside the "civilized" areas of the state.
I only became aware of my graveyard because the nephew of one of the residents remembered his aunt's burial when he was a kid, and for some reason he contacted the country historical society, who came knocking on my door one day with said nephew in tow asking for permission to document it...so we all took a walk. The funny thing is we were looking for depressions in the ground and specific types of plants that might have grown on the grave, when the nephew said he recalled it being on top of a hill (he was around 5 at the time.) I looked up on the rises and spotted this: The historical society took a census and the gps coordinates. I gotta think that there are still some number of "informal services" going on in parts of the lower 48. There must be some crazy stories in Alaska...and even crazier stuff there no one hears about. There aren't many places left where you can go and just get lost like that.
Where can bodies be buried in Virginia? Most bodies are buried in established cemeteries, but burial on private property may be possible in Virginia. Before conducting a home burial, check with the town or county clerk and local health department for the rules you must follow. If you bury a body on private land, you should draw a map of the property showing the burial ground and file it with the property deed so the location will be clear to others in the future. I found this part of the state code elsewhere: No cemetery shall be hereafter established within a county or the corporate limits of any city or town, unless authorized by appropriate ordinance subject to any zoning ordinance duly adopted by the governing body of such county, city or town; provided that authorization by county ordinance shall not be required for interment of the dead in any churchyard or for interment of members of a family on private property. This is giving me some severe déjà vu. Have we discussed this subject before?
The folks I wrote about who moved here from Texas are having trouble now with their water freezing. The wife told me they are thawing their water with a hair dryer every morning now. Pretty ingenious but a better solution for them should be out there. She just returned from South Texas this week from visiting family and she said she was very happy to be back, even with the cold. My wife reminded her that the coldest months are still to come. The church charity helped a single woman with wood for her woodstove last month, after which she proceeded to burn her cabin down. She is apparently living in another small cabin with no water, so we gave her a gift card to a local laundromat where she can get water, wash clothes, and take showers. When the United Way and Salvation Army helplines were called, they are out of money to help people until at least February.
I don't consider myself to be particularly stupid but it's quite likely that if I were to move to a remote area in Alaska, there would probably be a lot of things that I would wish I had thought of earlier during my first winter there. Even moving to Maine, although I grew up in a similar climate, I wasn't responsible for most of that stuff as a kid, or even as a teenager. Except for the inconvenience of sometimes losing an indoor water supply in the winter, feeding horses at 5:30 in the morning, shoveling driveways, and walking across ten acres of pasture in the snow in order to break a hole in the ice on the river so that the horses would have access to water, my dad was the one responsible for most of what we were going to face in the winter. Our first winter in Maine was rough because there were a lot of things that I didn't think of, or thought I'd have more time to prepare for. On the subject of breaking ice on the river, the damned horses seemed to know that the water was going to be frozen so they never bothered walking to the river on cold mornings. Seventeen horses would follow behind me as I fought my way through snow drifts on the way to the river, carrying an axe, but I was the one who had to break the path. After that, they'd keep the path clear as they went back and forth from the barn to the river.
I don't understand. Is the living space of their place so cold that the water freezes, or did they buy a place that has issues?
Our first winter in northern Virginia, the copper waterline froze. I got to go under the house and replace it. After that we put heat tape on it. I don't know why the prior owner did not have the risk mitigated. And it never occurred to me that we did not have that issue in Indiana, that I recall...it was much colder there for a much longer time.
The living space near the walls may be cold. I haven't been there, but they purchased a dry cabin (without water) and had a well drilled and water piped in. It could just be poorly done. Many houses here--mine included--have a bleed-back system where water does not remain in the supply pipe but instead bleeds back into the well. We have gone to -52 F. here with no problem, so I'm guessing their system does not bleed back into the well. She told me, "We're from Texas and we really don't know about cold."
I'd hate to think of contractors screwing people in life & death conditions like that...but I'm sure they do. My frost line is something like 30". I imagine up there it's measured in feet and probably not cost-effective to achieve.
I think many use 48" but the real people use 10'. Utilities in Anchorage froze one year buried 11 feet down, and Anchorage doesn't even get that cold.
My wife is the contact person for a charity operated by the church we attend, and she has been getting a very high number of requests for assistance of late. She said she believes many are from people who came to Alaska after Covid seeking the "good life" like those folks I posted about in previous posts but are unprepared for real winter. Many of the requests have been for firewood or propane/fuel oil. Most of us have been long prepared for the oncoming cold if we have been here a while. Wife says she thinks some are living in motorhomes and camper trailers they brought from the lower 48. They haven't found jobs (if they were even looking, perhaps thinking they were going to "live off the land") and now don't even have gas money to go back home. One woman with 3 young children seemed to be a good case, though. I don't know her story, or if her husband/partner died, left her, or was kicked out of the house. She needed a load of firewood and had just started a job, so she is on the way to a life. Another woman is keeping herself warm buying those little camp stove/ torch bottles of propane and living in a small motorhome, so she is on the way to ruin. The other weird woman I posted about in a previous thread whose husband died--it was finally ruled suicide--moved from here to Anchorage, then to Talkeetna, and was sent a ticket to the Caribbean by an old friend in Texas (where everybody is rich) and now says she is going to stay in St. Maarten where she apparently is having the time of her life.