| Human Crematorium Finds Home With the Holsteins |
| Thursday, 27 May 2004 | |
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GUILFORD, Vt. - Most everything on Bob and Jackie Gaines's 200-acre dairy farm blends right into the pastoral setting: the 60 Holsteins, the tractors and heavy equipment, the wooden shack where a son makes maple syrup in the spring.
Then there is the human crematory. Located in a small gray building on the other side of rural Route 5 from their home, the crematory diverges a bit from the farm's bucolic atmosphere. But it does have the advantage of assuring the survival of a two-century-old family business. Called Vermont Blessings, the crematory opened in December and belongs to Jim and Ellen Curley, but sits on the Gaines's property. The alliance was set last year when Mr. Curley began a second career as a crematory operator after 25 years as a management consultant. Vermont was certainly a promising place for the venture. Forty percent of people who die in the state are cremated, according to the Funeral Consumers Alliance, a nonprofit watchdog group, compared with a national average of 25 percent. Moreover, there are only six other licensed crematories in the state. As he made plans for his start-up, Mr. Curley realized he had a problem: His own 67-acre spread, straddling the side of a small mountain, would be inaccessible for clients in the winter. So, last summer, he knocked on the Gaineses' door and asked if they would be willing to let him set up shop on their farm, which produces milk, cream, maple syrup and alfalfa, and where Mrs. Gaines breeds and boards dogs and operates haunted hayrides in the fall. Mrs. Gaines was skeptical at first. A crematory might emit unpleasant odors or pollutants, she fretted, or be seen as an eyesore, or damage the farm's reputation. She had already rejected an overture from a man who had wanted to develop a huge chunk of her land into a storage facility. But she trusted the Curleys. And she realized that the additional income would keep her farm in the black and assure its eventual passage to the hands of her three grown sons, the ninth generation of Gaines farmers. "Our first and foremost concern is to continue our dairy farm," Mrs. Gaines said. And so Mrs. Gaines, her husband, Bob, and her father-in-law, Bob Sr. took a chance on the Curleys. And the gamble has paid off, they say. The crematory emits no discernible odors or pollutants that they know of. The building that houses it sits on a hill and resembles a wooden shed with stained glass windows above and on both sides of the door, fitting in unobtrusively with the landscape. And none of the Gaineses' neighbors have publicly complained about it, though they had a chance to do so before the permit was granted. "We joke and say it's the nicest building on the farm," Mrs. Gaines said. Best of all, the money they receive from the Curleys is helping keep their farm afloat, she says. (She would not disclose the size of the payments.) John McKiernan, director of the Small Business Development Center at Boston College, said small businesses often come up with innovative ideas to stay alive. For example, farmers, he said, have recently been renting out space for cellphone towers to make extra money. While subletting space is a common small-business practice, Professor McKiernan said, it is usually for the short-term, not a long-term agreement like the one reached between the Curleys and the Gaineses. "Small businesses are really quite innovative in coming up with things," Professor McKiernan said. "There's no particular pattern to them. It's 'who do you know who has something that I can use?' " Mr. Curley charges $975 for a customized cremation package, which includes pickup and transport of the body and urn. He declines to say how many cremations he has performed, but insists business is doing well. He has lined up about 25 prearranged cremations, he says, and hopes to obtain a license to run a funeral home and perform services within the next year. Joshua Slocum, the executive director of the Funeral Consumers Alliance, which is based in Burlington, Vt., said Mr. Curley's fee seemed excessive, saying somewhere from $500 to $800 would be more reasonable. Mr. Curley, however, said the fee guaranteed a personal service not available elsewhere. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/27/business/27sbiz.html |