Bedrock Vineyard has been farmed since 1854, and is home to some of the oldest working vines in California. Today, Oliver Lockhart, Casey Barton, and a small dedicated team led by Jake Neustadt are simultaneously farming and rehabilitating the historic ranch, alongside other vineyard sites across California. Bedrock Vineyard is Regenerative Organic Certified (ROC), with their focus being on rebuilding eco-systems, landscapes, soils and biodiversity.
Given the complexity of this historic site, how does a small team manage over 152 acres of old vines holistically? We recently interviewed Oliver and Casey from the team at Bedrock Vineyard on customising Sectormentor to support their team.
In this case study you’ll learn how Bedrock:
- Cut decision-making time by 75%
- Customised Sectormentor for on-site experiments and surveys
- Uses Sectormentor for ROC certification audits
- Streamlined team communication and task allocation to one central platform
Using Sectormentor’s reports to make confident decisions in one quarter of the time
Before Sectormentor, the team at Bedrock were “using another data system, spreadsheets, and communicating photos through text”. In Oliver’s words, “it was definitely just kind of all over the place.”
Yield predictions
Calculating yield predictions was a strenuous task that required inputting collected data into a complex spreadsheet. The Bedrock team now use Sectormentor’s Yield Prediction Tool to provide estimates in minutes:
“When we were doing yield predictions, before it was much more like take your counts, transfer them into a spreadsheet, then build out that spreadsheet. Sectormentor’s yield predictor has made it very easy – it’s plug and play. So we’ve saved time from a data transfer perspective.”
– Casey Barton
Phenological tracking
Using Sectormentor’s Phenology Report has also helped everyone in the team stay updated on seasonal progression:
“It’s been really useful being able to track phenology, and take a quick look at that and see exactly where we’re at. This year, for example, we’re very ahead of schedule, and that’s all tracked from bud break to bloom. Making sure that we’re still on that predicted schedule has been easy to visualise as well.”
– Casey Barton
Time savings – from 2 hours to 30 minutes
Now, having pruning weights, cluster counts, and yield history reports displayed alongside live yield predictions gives the team much more clarity when making management calls. This has meant that they’ve been able to cut their decision-making time down from 2 hours to 30 minutes:
“Sectormentor definitely saves a huge amount of time. The old way we were pulling all these reports, it would have been two hours in the office putting this stuff together just to make a call on how we’re gonna prune, or how we’re gonna do our fruit drop this year… versus now, I can check everything over in the course of 10 minutes, and make a decision in 30 minutes. So it’s definitely a huge, huge time saver, the reports are very helpful for me.”
– Oliver Lockhart
This more streamlined process gives Oliver confidence in decision-making: “a lot of it is just peace of mind too, just being able to have access to all of that, and look over it, and know that everything’s there and accurate.”
Reports to synchronise the whole team
Being a small and fluid team at Bedrock has also meant that having a system to bring together different roles and areas of the business has been a huge asset; Sectormentor has synthesised everything into a handful of reports, in one central place, to be used by any team member:
“For a small company where we’re wearing a lot of hats, we’re doing everything from site management and farming to grape sales. It’s been very helpful to have all of our information in one place, to quickly access and utilise it. You have your yield prediction there, and you have all of your historical data right there, all in real time – yeah, it’s been extraordinarily helpful to have these reports.”
– Casey Barton
The benefits of customisability
For the Bedrock team, a major benefit to using Sectormentor has been the ability to adapt it to their exact custom monitoring needs. Rather than trying to fit their farming system into pre-packaged templates, the team have been able to set up tailored monitoring categories; this flexibility allows them to capture precise, ground-level details, like logging specific PSI readings to assess compaction or tracking visual soil health metrics for their Regenerative Organic Certification (ROC), all alongside their yield predictions and historical vineyard data.
This freedom allows the team to experiment with their practices and see what works for their unique site. For example, Oliver and Casey ran an experiment tracking cover crop height, density and diversity in Sectormentor to assess when best to mow their cover crops, and how this affects next season’s cover crop growth. Their results showed that mowing the cover crops early in the season, as opposed to letting them go to seed, led to less pressure from undesirable plant species and a higher density and diversity of cover crop growth for the next season.
(Photos + notes taken from the Bedrock Sectormentor account)
The team also designed a comprehensive compaction survey in Sectormentor; they measured PSI across three separate points in each row (mid-row, tractor wheel, and under-vine) and GPS located each result to their map. The findings showed that the soils that had been tilled before being transitioned to no-till were much less compacted and had more biological activity.
“I think the big difference that we’ve seen with sectormentor is just being able to customise it – that’s been huge. We’ve been making new categories for soil compaction and doing a survey of that, which we did this off-season.”
– Casey Barton
The GPS locations of each recording in Sectormentor meant that the team could specifically target compacted areas with selective ripping or aeration, while leaving thriving rows in no-till or crimped cover crops. The GPS-located sample points also provide exact coordinates to return to for soil chemistry tests at a later date.
These examples show how Sectormentor supports Bedrock to, in Casey’s words, ‘farm proactively, as opposed to reactively’.
Sectormentor’s built-in certification & ROC audits
Gathering data for Regenerative Organic Certification (ROC) is a high-priority task for the team at Bedrock; so they integrated their ROC testing metrics and activities directly into Sectormentor.
By routinely uploading Haney tests, and PLFA (Phospholipid Fatty Acid) lab results, and logging visual soil health indicators on Sectormentor’s Regen Platform, all certification evidence lives alongside day-to-day farming notes, and can be accessed at any moment; when it’s time for audits, reports can be created in seconds.
All team members on the same page
For a small team managing multiple vineyard sites, communication needs to be clear and efficient. Prior to Sectormentor, the Bedrock team were using text messages to share information across vineyard teams, “we were just communicating photos and stuff like that through text, and yeah it was definitely just all over the place”.
Now, having a platform to bring together observations, notes, and scouting activities means that everyone is always in the loop.
Organised scouting & avoidance of repeated tasks
Having scouting activities from all team members stored together and visualised in Sectormentor has proven invaluable to avoiding task overlaps, saving time in the process:
GPS-located field notes & observations
Simple map pins with photos have also helped the Bedrock team to solve daily logistical challenges across their vineyards.
For example, Casey logged a GPS-located observation into Sectormentor marking a hidden irrigation valve, meaning that anyone on the team could instantly locate it in future:
“Another thing that’s been really great is the map function. I was out at a smaller vineyard that we farm, and the irrigation system is just kind of this labyrinth with hidden valves in the woods. So being able to drop a pin and take a picture to show everyone ‘this is here’, so somebody later on doesn’t have to find it. You know? It’s just these little things have been really great.”
– Casey Barton
Putting the people back into farming
Aside from the logistical benefits of using Sectormentor, Oliver and the team at Bedrock value working with a system that is people-centred, that reflects their values, and seeks to re-empower growers:
“I think Sectomentor is also unique. I feel like it still centers scouting and being out in the field, having people involved rather than just running a camera through the rows… I think it’s important to have people centered in that system, making observations and being in the field. This is different to what a lot of the other ag tech companies are offering, I think that’s cool. It feels like Sectormentor reflects back a lot of things that we value at Bedrock: the best way to support people with technology is to empower them through their own observations in the field, rather than taking that away.”
– Casey Barton
Being able to share their reports and block-by-block breakdowns in an accessible way with other growers has also helped the Bedrock team to empower other vineyards and viticulturists in their regenerative learnings:
“We’re a ranch that is known for regenerative agriculture and what we’re doing in the vineyard, and so having this platform for me to use in grower relations is really exciting. There are all the benefits of using the platform, it’s so great, and so clean, and so much better than any system I’ve used, that’s wonderful; but then also being able to put together block by block, educational information for farmers and for wine growers who are interested in this data and what we’re doing…that’s a very exciting part of it for me.”
– Casey Barton
How Sectormentor could work for you
By pulling scattered records into a single, customisable platform, the Bedrock team have created a grounded, block-by-block monitoring system that saves hours in the office and supports proactive decision-making in the field. If you’re interested in how Sectormentor could do the same for your vineyard, visit our page for large vineyards and estate groups, email us at info@vidacycle.com, or book a demo.
A huge thank you to Oliver, Casey and the Bedrock team for sharing their work with us!
You can also sign up to our free 7-day email course which walks you through a simple observation routine that helps you maintain steady yields, build resilience into your vineyard, and plan harvest with confidence.
Learn to Grow Resilient Vines
and Quality Grapes with our free, 7-day email course.
and Quality Grapes with our free, 7-day email course.
Turn Your Observations Into a
Stronger and Healthier Vineyard
See how Sectormentor works for you:
