We try to update the site every time we do maintenance to the cemetery, and those updates will aggregate to this page.
We don’t mind the mowing–my brother described it as kind of a pilgrimage, and I see it as a way to honor our ancestors and to love our neighbors.
However, we live two and a half to three hours away, and mowing means a 5 to 6 hour round-trip commute and 1-2 man hours of mowing, so it’s a pretty full day.
If you are available to help with the mowing let me know which month you would like to mow and we will take ourselves off of the schedule for that month:
- April 26 – Dan & Josh
- May 24 – Dan & Josh
- June 21 – Dan & Josh
- July 19 – Dan & Josh
- August 16 – Dan & Josh
- September 13 – Dan & Josh
- October 11* – Dan & Josh
*optional mow, depending on weather
You will want to load the thinnest string available for your weedeater–some of the stones are concrete and sometimes brittle. You do not necessarily need to mow on the dates listed (all Saturdays), but those are the dates we have listed because it takes us a Saturday to drive to Corkery, mow, and return home.
Note: we have been asked by the campground owner to start mowing no earlier than 9am.
Two weeks ago we went down to do the monthly mowing. The grass was thick, wet, and tall, and the bugs swarmed our eyes as we mowed.
We will go down for the last mow of the year probably late September
Other than that, nothing new. If you know someone in the area with a decent drone that would be interested in taking aerial pix of the cemetery, please let me know.
Today marks one year since I rediscovered Corkery Cemetery and we began regular maintenance to keep the cemetery up.
Yesterday my daughter and I went down to do what I thought we be a fairly simple and straightforward task: divide the cemetery up into a grid and map each and every grave.
Mapping each grave was something that I had already done once before and attempted a second time until I realized it was just too difficult to keep track of the wandering rows and columns in the cemetery.
The first was the day after Thanksgiving 2017 when I had discovered the cemetery, and I mapped all 65 graves. All 65 that I found, anyway.
The only problem was that since then, as we have removed trees, branches, brush, and continued to keep up the mowing we keep discovering additional graves.
For each of the last three times we have visited we have found a new grave each time–including yesterday.
As best I can tell we are up to around 130 graves now.
First we placed 50 metal grave markers, then mapped all of the columns.
Anyway, our straightforward, easy day was anything but—after half a day and half the cemetery, we ran out of string and also needed food. I had honestly expected to have had plenty of string and expected to be totally done and on our way to Bennet Springs to hike the rest of the day away.
We headed into Lebanon, got lunch and a big skein of yarn—bigger than our previous roll of string. We ate in the car on the way back to the cemetery to save time.
It turns out we still should have gotten more string; our skein of yarn ran out, then I resorted to fluorescent tape I had brought just in case, and then we ran out of that as well.
We did get the vast majority of the graves labeled and photographed—but we still didn’t get done; we were shooting pictures right up to the last of the daylight.
In all we documented 103 graves, and I have updated my Excel spreadsheets as best I can, but it will take at least one more visit with at least two people to associate all of the grave ID’s with all of the plot coordinates, as well as marking and photographing the remaining ~11 graves.
Also, something I hadn’t thought of until just now: how the heck will I make this grid permanent in case we find more graves?
DAY 2, 11/24
The day after Thanksgiving was cold and rainy so we stayed inside. Saturday turned out to be nice again, so we set out back to Corkery to finish.
We got all the rest of the graves mapped and plotted, then we went through the whole cemetery, associating grave ID’s with plot ID’s. Now all the graves are mapped, identified, plotted, and photographed. We also sprayed some Wet & Forget on some of the stones that were the most affected by mold, lichen, and moss.
While we were working we found a few stones that will need to be repaired, so, we will add those to the work list.
We chainsawed out the lowest-hanging branches, and Josh and his kids hauled off the brush.
Elsa personally tackled thinning out all of the dead and overgrown branches from the tree in the downhill corner of the cemetery:
Here is the freshly pruned tree. Hopefully this will allow more sun to get to the healthy and struggling branches so we don’t have to lop any more off.
We tested out some cleaner that is supposed to get rid of mold, mildew, moss, and lichen without attacking the headstones. It’s slow acting, so I will check on it next time we head down.
And we found yet another gravestone:
We also put down some new stakes to mark the graves. These will take the place of the little flags that we have been temporarily using to mark them with. These new stakes are more attractive and more durable against the weedeater. Eventually we will have the plot numbers on them.
Unfortunately, they are also more expensive 😐 
I was hoping to finishing mapping all the graves, but the photo capabilities of my drone are pretty lame, besides the fact I don’t really know the best way to spatially map out such an irregularly laid out piece of ground.
Here is where my drone almost went in the drink:
I did some research into how much it would cost to find all the graves in the cemetery with Ground Penetrating Radar. The quick answer is ‘a lot’, but I have reached out to a Missouri company for an actual quote.
And here is a nice picture of some moss.
