Eco-friendly burial offered in Walton County

 Two northern Walton County bean growers are using their 350-acre farm to offer an eco-friendly way to bury the deceased.

With a 100-year-old sawmill on location and the ingenuity of John and Bill Wilkerson, customers at the Glendale Memorial Nature Preserve can buy caskets made from trees on the land.

The men say their caskets can be manufactured into temporary furniture pieces before they actually are used as caskets. The philosophy is to grow a tree, turn it into lumber, fabricate the lumber into a casket, send it home with shelves so it can be used for storage or a table, and then finally send it back with the deceased inside.

At the preserve, each grave site is surveyed with markers — brass at the head and aluminum at the foot — to clearly identify its place in the natural environment. To date, 22 people have been buried there, including local hero Tim Padgett, who was killed in action in Afghanistan in 2007.

The Preserve offers more for the visitor than the green burial experience: Bamboo groves, hayride tours, native flora and fauna exploration, a turpentine collection demonstration, a boardwalk stroll over Lake Barbara and an open-air chapel.

GETTING THERE:

From South Walton, take U.S. Highway 331 north to U.S. Highway 90 in DeFuniak Springs. Turn right, then left on C.R. 83. Go 10 miles and the Preserve will be on the right.

Hours: 9 a.m. – 4 p.m. Thursday - Sunday.
Requested donation: $10
www.glendalenaturepreserve.org
Phone: (850) 859-2141
297 Railroad Avenue
Defuniak Springs