The Bluestem Conservation Cemetery Story 

In 2015, Jeff Masten and Heidi Hannapel crafted a vision for Bluestem and set about researching and planning for central North Carolina's first conservation cemetery. They visited over 35 natural and conservation cemeteries around the country and helped found the Conservation Burial Alliance, a national nonprofit dedicated to supporting the protection, restoration, and sustainable management of conservation land that incorporates natural burial cemeteries.  

 In 2018, they were joined by Allen Brimer, Ben Johnston-Krase and Brandon Wert, of Farm Church, a service oriented congregation that meets on a farm in Durham, NC. These colleagues introduced the vision for Bluestem to faith leaders and community members in the region, and continued to evolve their concept with listening sessions among groups that specialized in community care, hospice and death care, funeral consumer interest, green burial advocacy, land conservation and law. 

With the arrival of Covid-19 in early 2020, Bluestem's listening sessions and outreach efforts moved online. ​Death, loss and grief surrounded us throughout 2020 and into 2021. We discovered through our Bluestem Conversations online that people were eager to share their experiences with family members' end of life choice. Most everyone we listened to wanted "something different" for their own disposition; a burial option that was more personal, meaningful, and less impactful on the earth. 

As green burial advocates, equally committed to protecting the natural beauty and resources of our beloved Piedmont, we shared our vision for establishing Bluestem as central North Carolina's first conservation cemetery. 

Bluestem continues to be shaped by the people we meet -- passionate individuals seeking restorative spaces in nature and a burial option that: 

• Supports family and friends in the sacred act of green burial 
• Celebrates a special Piedmont landscape 
• Honors loved ones through the protection of land​
• Restores native grasslands and wildlife habitat
• Serves as a living memorial for rest and refuge 
• Reveres the sacred in nature 

In February 2021, we formed Bluestem Community NC as a 508(c(1(a) faith- based organization, that will be the nonprofit owner operator of Bluestem. It is governed by a Council of Stewards that oversee the management and operations of Bluestem. The six individuals currently serving on the Council (as founding board members for the nonprofit) bring experience and skills in community building, spiritual journeying, land conservation, nonprofit governance, management, and law. 

In January 2022, Bluestem Community acquired 87 acres of beautiful open land and Piedmont forest in Cedar Grove, North Carolina. The open fields were well cared for and planted in corn by the former landowner. Neighboring properties, both in agriculture and timber, are owned by longstanding Orange County farming families.

Bluestem recognizes the region’s rich agricultural and cultural history and is honored to exist alongside rolling landscapes dotted with livestock and productive farmland. These compatible attributes fit with Bluestem’s goals for designing a conservation cemetery that preserves a region’s rural character, ensures healthy wildlife corridors, protects important stream corridors, and ultimately provides our community with an enduring place of rest and regeneration. 

Bluestem will open to the public in Summer 2022. Until then, take a virtual walk through Bluestem here.

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Bluestem Community Council of Stewards 
2021-2023
Carl Baumann        Jeff Masten 
             Allen Brimer            Franziska Rokoske 
   Heidi Hannapel       


Learn more about Bluestem's Council of Stewards

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