Why Regenified?

By Sar Yashinskie

When I started at Blackwood...

one of the first things Cath asked me to do was research and guide Blackwood toward an Organic certification.

Her true goal, though, was something a little bigger: Regenerative Organic Certification.

So, I started researching.

We quickly learned that in order to pursue Regenerative Organic Certification, we would first need to become Certified Organic through the USDA. That’s when the work really began. We reached out to organic certifiers and explained our situation. Blackwood is a unique kind of farm. We are a nonprofit teaching farm, and our farm is filled with visitors, many of them children.

As we talked with different certifiers, we began to hear that having children actively participating on the farm could create challenges for organic certification.

That was disheartening.

We knew that the work we were already doing was aligned with many of the principles of organic agriculture. More importantly, we knew that inviting children onto the land was not something we were willing to give up. Connecting children with nature, agriculture, food, and the land is at the heart of why Blackwood exists.

We weren't willing to sacrifice that part of our mission to earn a certification.

So we kept looking.

That search eventually led us to Regenified.

Regenified certifies regenerative farms across the United States and beyond, but what stood out to us was that they weren't simply putting another label on the word regenerative.

They were giving the word meaning.

They had developed a way to look at the health of a farm as a whole. They looked beyond what we put into the soil and instead asked what we are doing to create a healthy, functioning ecosystem.

And, perhaps most importantly for us, they understood Blackwood.

They understood why children belong on a farm. They understood that education and stewardship can happen together. Rather than asking us to change who we were to fit into a certification program, they met us where we were and helped us understand where we could go.

That relationship has changed the way we think about our farm.

The 6-3-4 Verification Standard

Regenified created the 6-3-4 Verification Standard, which gives us a framework for understanding and measuring regenerative agriculture.

6 Principles of Soil Health:

• Context
• Disturbance
• Armor
• Diversity
• Living Roots
• Livestock Integration

3 Rules of Stewardship:

• Compounding
• Diversity
• Disruption

4 Ecosystem Processes:

• Water Cycle
• Mineral Cycle
• Energy Flow
• Community Dynamics

At first glance, these might sound like a lot of technical terms.

But the more time we spend with them, the more we realize how connected they are to the simple things we see every day on the farm.

Regenified visits Blackwood each year to check our progress and visually assess the land. Every three years, they also test our soil to see what is happening below our feet.

And that last part is important.

Because so much of farming happens where we can't see it.

We can look across a field and see a beautiful crop, but beneath our feet there is an entire world at work: roots, fungi, bacteria, minerals, water, air, and countless other organisms interacting with one another.

Our goal is to protect that world as much as possible.

One of the biggest lessons we have learned is that soil protection starts with coverage.

We don't want our soil sitting bare and exposed to the sun, wind, and rain. We want living roots in the ground whenever possible. We want plants and organic matter protecting the soil surface. We want to reduce disturbance and avoid disrupting the relationships that are already working beneath our feet.

We're learning to look at the farm differently.

Instead of asking only, "What can we grow here?"

We are learning to ask:

• What does this soil need?
• What does this ecosystem need?
• How can we disturb the land less?
• How can we increase diversity?
• How can we keep the soil covered and alive?

And maybe most importantly:‍

• How can we leave this land healthier than we found it?

We are still learning here.

That's one of the things I appreciate most about regenerative agriculture. We are all students, learning from the natural cycles the Earth has been flowing through for millions of years. It is a process of observing, learning, experimenting, and adjusting.

We are a teaching farm, after all.

We get to teach children that produce doesn’t come from the grocery store. We teach them how seeds become plants, how chickens provide eggs, how food waste turns into compost, and how much life exists all around us when we slow down enough to notice it.

Every handful of soil has something to teach us.

Every season gives us another opportunity to listen.

And every time we choose to protect the soil, increase diversity, keep roots in the ground, or rethink an old farming practice, we are taking another small step toward the kind of future we hope to model for the next generation.

That's why Regenified matters to us.

It isn't simply about earning a certification.

It's about learning how to be better stewards of the land, and sharing what we learn with the children, families, farmers, and community members who visit us every week.