NJ native and celebrity chef Martha Stewart has never been subtle. She’s built a career off of doing what she wants, when she wants to. According to a new interview, Stewart plans to take that boldness beyond this life.
On the 50+ & Unfiltered podcast, the 84-year-old said she refuses the traditional coffin and sanitized funeral routine. Instead, Stewart wants to be laid to rest in a deep hole on her property, where she can quietly decompose and return to the soil.
It might sound crazy, but human composting is nothing new, New Jersey legalized the act earlier this year. The celebrity chef admitted that she practices a similar type of composting already. When one of her beloved horses dies, a grave is dug on her personal farm, the animal is wrapped in a sheet and lowered into the ground—allowed to decay and enrich the soil in the process.
“Why not? It’s not going to hurt anyone. It’s my property,” she said when asked about the legality on the podcast.
Lucky for Stewart, human composting is also legal in New York, so there’s no permission needed—though, in classic Martha-style, we’re not sure she was concerned with getting permission in the first place. Her mind is made up: to the soil it is.
Martha Stewart Eat, Sleeps and Breathes Gardening
Stewart has built her life around gardens and the idea of making things perfect and idealistic. Being buried like her horses—under her land—is her final garden project.
A New Jersey native, Stewart was born in Jersey City and grew up in Nutley, graduating from Nutley High School. She has spent a career turning ordinary things into magic. Even her plans after death include no room for the ordinary.
She isn’t slowing down in the meantime, even at 84. Stewart is launching skincare, showing up on red carpets and spoiling her two grandchildren. There is still plenty she wants to do in this life.
But the end, when it comes, will be simple: a hole in the ground and a return to the earth, becoming a permanent piece of the land.
What else can we say? It’s incredibly “Martha.”
The New Jersey Digest is a new jersey magazine that has chronicled daily life in the Garden State for over 10 years.