Case Study

How Schuyler Farms eliminated manual monitoring and saved 20+ hours a month.

A Norfolk County farm replaces clipboard-based data collection with real-time sensor monitoring across multiple storage facilities.

125+
Sensors installed
20+
Hours saved per month
100%
Reduction in clipboard checks
About Schuyler Farms
Location
Norfolk County, ON
Established 1980
Operation
50 full-time
400 seasonal staff
Focus
Sustainable agriculture
Apples, cherries, grains, oilseeds
The Problem

Clipboards, missed checks, and product at risk.

If you manage storage across multiple farm buildings, you know that manual monitoring rounds are one of those tasks that feel manageable until they are not. Someone misses a check. A reading that should have triggered action sits in a notebook. A person who carried all the knowledge in their head goes on vacation. The product suffers, and by the time you find out, it is too late.

Schuyler Farms produces apples, sour cherries, grains, and oilseeds across a multi-site operation in Norfolk County. With multiple storage facilities on the property, maintaining the right environmental conditions, temperature, humidity, air quality, and water pressure, is directly tied to product quality and yield.

For years, the team managed this with clipboard-based rounds. Staff walked the facilities, logged readings manually at each station, and moved on. The data never made it into a system where it could be tracked or analysed. Process knowledge lived with individuals rather than the organization.

The farm tested several off-the-shelf sensor solutions. None fit. Alerts went to the entire team with no way to assign responsibility. Data sat in separate tools with no integration. The software on the market was either too limited or too complex. Schuyler needed something built specifically for how they operated. That solution did not exist, so they decided to build it.

The Shift

From manual rounds to real-time visibility.

Before

Clipboard rounds

  • Readings logged by hand at each station
  • Data never reached a system that could analyse or alert
  • Process knowledge tied to individuals, not the organization
  • Problems discovered after product was already at risk
  • Off-the-shelf tools fragmented across disconnected systems
After

Storage Sentry

  • 125+ sensors reporting continuously, no walkthroughs required
  • Real-time alerts routed to the right person, with context
  • Historical data available for traceability and audits
  • 20+ hours of monthly labour returned to higher-value work
  • One platform, managed in-house, built for the way they work
The Solution

Built around how the farm actually works.

Adam Wills had worked with Schuyler Farms before, delivering a weather station network and a pest control monitoring system. His track record and technical depth made him the clear choice. The Schuyler team did not look elsewhere.

Wills started by meeting with staff across the operation. He wanted to understand what had failed with previous tools, what the team actually needed to do their jobs effectively, and what success would look like in practice.

Dave Petheram, Senior Operations Technology Manager at Schuyler Farms, in an apple orchard in Norfolk County, Ontario
“We'd worked with other developers in the past who just waited for direction: 'Tell me what to do, and I'll do it.' But if we had the time to figure it out, we wouldn't need help. Adam takes a much more proactive, customer-focused approach. That's the real value; he just gets it done.”
Dave Petheram, Senior Operations Technology Manager, Schuyler Farms

Wills sourced and tested hardware across dozens of sensor models before selecting a curated set suited to Schuyler's conditions. The sensors needed to perform reliably in demanding agricultural environments, waterproof, durable, and accurate across the range of conditions present in cold storage, grain storage, and open facilities.

He installed them incrementally, validating each device's data output before moving to the next location. With the hardware in place, he built Storage Sentry, a custom web application that analyses incoming data and delivers real-time alerts to the specific team members responsible for each area.

Alerts fall into two categories:

Environmental alerts

Triggered when temperature, humidity, or other conditions drift outside the defined acceptable range for a given space. The team gets advance notice before product is at risk.

Sensor performance alerts

Triggered by low battery, lost signal, or inactivity. These keep the monitoring infrastructure itself accountable and prevent blind spots from developing unnoticed.

The system expanded over time to include multi-node sensor units in cooling areas, capturing readings at multiple points to verify consistent airflow and ambient conditions throughout each space.

Wills trained the Schuyler team on the full platform, covering installation, troubleshooting, and adding or updating sensors. The team now manages the system in-house.

The Results

Continuous visibility. Faster response. Better decisions.

With more than 125 sensors installed across its facilities, Schuyler Farms has continuous visibility into the conditions that affect product quality. Manual clipboard rounds have been eliminated entirely. The team saves more than 20 hours a month that was previously spent on data collection, and staff can check readings or review alerts through the web app from anywhere on the property.

When something needs attention, the right person gets notified directly, with clear information about what the issue is and where it is.

“Storage Sentry pushes decision-making to the right people, faster. Instead of alerts going to me and slowing things down, they now go directly to whoever needs to act, with clear context and instructions. No interpretation needed; just here's the issue, here's where it is. Go.”
Dave Petheram

The platform has also strengthened quality control. If a batch of apples shows signs of spoilage, the team can pull historical sensor data to determine whether conditions fell outside acceptable ranges on-site or during transit. That traceability reduces liability and helps the team identify where in the chain the problem originated.

Looking ahead, Schuyler Farms plans to use the data to optimize production: analysing trends in cooling times, temperature, and fruit firmness to reduce energy costs and improve long-term profitability.

“Storage Sentry is designed with farmers, for farmers, and it's a solution that just works. Setting up sensors isn't the hard part — it's building the logic, the connections, and the user-friendly interface. That's where it adds real value, both for us and the industry.”
Dave Petheram

Ready to protect your operation?
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