By Olivia Cohen, The Cedar Rapids Gazette
PEOSTA, IOWA – Whirring saws and buzzing power sanders can be heard from the New Melleray Abbey as Trappist monks craft wooden caskets between communal prayer calls.
The wood for the caskets comes from the abbey’s property, about 1500 acres of hardwood forest – the second largest, privately-owned timberland in the state – less than 10 miles from Dubuque’s city limits.
The business, Trappist Caskets, launched in 1999 and brings in about $5 million in revenue each year. Rather than profit, the monks’ work is driven by their desire to work with their hands and give back to their community and the earth in their lifetime, said Sam Mulgrew, a layperson who manages Trappist Caskets.
To that end, the abbey has long prioritized forest conservation as part of their business.
“We’re really focused on trying to create a genetically diverse ecosystem out there,” Mulgrew said. “And when that ecosystem can provide us material for caskets, only then do we (harvest) it.”
Now, more than 25 years after the business launched, the monastery is getting some help with their conservation work.
The U.S. Forest Service – which is housed within the U.S. Department of Agriculture – awarded the New Melleray Abbey over $3 million to protect their land indefinitely from development.
The funds are part of the Forest Legacy Program, which works to support the permanent conservation of environmentally important forests across the country.
So far in 2025, the program has supported more than 259,000 acres of private and economically important forested areas across 18 states.
John Schroeder, the abbey’s full-time forester, said forestry and monastery labor work well together because they are both focused on the long term.
It “makes forestry a natural fit for the Trappists,” he said.
What is the Forest Legacy Program?
In the 1980s, New Englanders worried about losing access to privately owned but publicly accessible forestlands due to development. In response, in 1990, Congress established the Forest Legacy Program to preserve privately owned forested areas across the country. A majority of U.S. forestland is privately held, particularly in the eastern part of the country. In 1996, Congress amended the program to allow states to participate, too.
The program provides grants which can be used to purchase land for preservation or to put forestland into an easement, a legal agreement that prohibits a landowner from developing the land.
Aron Flickinger works as a forestry program specialist with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, where he oversees the Forest Legacy Program for Iowa.
The program is federally funded and is administered individually by each state, Flickinger said. He said it is up to each state to identify and assist landowners who are willing to participate.
Oftentimes, he said, woodland owners put their land in the program to ensure it is safe from commercial development or urban sprawl and to maintain healthy forest. Program participants can still log their land as part of their management.
“Keeping (forests) natural, that means they’re more easily managed for timber, but also managed for wildlife habitat,” Flickinger said. “Really that depends on the owner’s goals.”
He said the monastery project was selected because of how “unusual” it is; the land plot is large and close to Dubuque’s city limits.
“The threat of selling off 40 acres to a developer and turning that into a housing unit is real in that area,” he said.
Another Iowa project received funding, too. About 60 miles northwest of Des Moines, the state received nearly $1.5 million to expand an existing wildlife management area. The state will purchase about 250 acres of land to add to the Saylorville Wildlife Management Area in the Des Moines River Valley.
The project will provide three new public access points to the wildlife area for hunting, trapping, hiking and camping, which is estimated to add about $5 million to Boone County’s economy annually, according to grant materials.
Outside of Iowa, 21 additional conservation and forestry projects were funded this year under the Forest Legacy Program.
A lumber company has received $10.2 million to put over 20,000 acres of forested land across Montana, Idaho and Washington into an easement that will preserve wildlife habitat and connect timberlands that help sustain regional mills. The property will be permanently accessible to the public for hunting, fishing, hiking, biking and snowmobiling.
Oklahoma has been allotted $15.9 million to acquire 11,333 acres of land to establish Oklahoma’s first state forest, the Musket Mountain State Forest.
Arkansas has been allocated $7 million to protect over 11 miles of streams that feed into the drinking water supply for 500,000 people. The money will pay for 3,471 acres to create a contiguous forested conservation corridor from central Arkansas to Oklahoma.
In Mississippi, $435,000 was allocated for an easement protecting 270 acres of privately held longleaf pine savanna within the borders of the De Soto National Forest.
Trappist Caskets
Forested hills and creeks stretch across the monastery’s 1500 acre property.
The monks grow apples, peaches and mushrooms on a portion of the land. But the majority of it is diligently managed hardwood forest.
Mulgrew said many different tree species grow in the forest but the monks use the wood from pine, black cherry, walnut and red oak trees to make the caskets. He said that they also grow white oak, both hard and soft maple, ash and hickory trees.
They harvest by various methods. One approach Schroeder likes is to rip up soil under a stand of oak trees that have dropped acorns, thereby helping the seeds root, then to harvest the trees above. He’s also clear cut and done large overstory harvests of the forest, where the tallest trees were removed from a stand.
He always actively manages replanting.
“I planted over 800 seedlings per acre on any of the harvests that we do,” Schroeder said. “In the next couple of years, I will be going in to look at one of our clear cuts, our overstory removal harvest, to start weeding out trees and to try and get specific oak species to move up through the canopy.”
Brother Joseph, who doesn’t use a last name as part of his religious vows, works in the monastery’s gardens and helps with casket making. He said each time a casket is sold they plant a symbolic tree.
If they have a surplus of one kind of wood, the monks make sure there is a use for it and it doesn’t go to waste.
During the Covid pandemic they started installing 300 foot buffers – strips of permanent vegetation that slow water runoff by filtering out sediments, nutrients and pesticides – along creeks on their property to clean the water that runs off agricultural land. Schroeder said the buffer will help curb erosion along the creek, as well.
“The forest here is managed in a way that costs a lot more in terms of cost of goods because of the amount of expense that we put into our forest,” Mulgrew said.
With the Forest Legacy Program funding, the monastery will put their property into an easement, permanently prohibiting development on the land.
Back at the workshop, the monks put the finishing touches on each casket, polishing the wood and adding metal handles. They bless each casket before sending it to families all over the world. They make cremation urns, as well.
Mulgrew said that Trappist Caskets produces about 2,000 caskets per year, costing between $1,700 and $4,900, depending on the style and the woods used. The company makes child-sized caskets, as well, which they ship across the country at no cost to families in need.
There have been opportunities for the company to expand the number of caskets they make, but Mulgrew said the monastery decided against it.
“We’re not interested in growing the casket business,” Mulgrew said. “We’re not willing to take the risk of allowing the tail to wag the dog. Growth is of interest to us, but not in terms of volume growth or making more caskets to make more money. That’s not where the monastery is psychologically.”
Instead, the goal is to take care of the land and the people who are buried in their caskets.
“If we’re in Asia or India, the priestly class handles that intersection of life and death. In the United States, it is done by capitalists, funeral directors, the whole sort of death care industry is guided by profit and loss,” said Mulgrew. “The Trappists don’t approach it that way. The profane part is less interesting to them than the sacred part of making a casket and adding value to it that’s more than just a box, a container to hold a body.”
This story is a product of the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an independent reporting network based at the University of Missouri in partnership with Report for America, with major funding from the Walton Family Foundation.
