I can't speak for everyone, but wouldn't it feel great to be on top of everything in the vineyard and feel like you are ahead of the game for once? In the moment, you'll likely never feel this relaxed. Even if you are on top of things, there will be times when you think you are behind. Aside from those realities, I want to discuss some ways to create time in your business and to assess whether you are really ahead of the game or behind the 8-ball. I'll end the discussion by summarizing three tools I use in getting the work done on time each season for the least cost.

Creation of time: What do I mean by creating time? The ability to be doing the things you know you should be doing at the time you know you should be doing them and still have time for any emergencies that come up. This is proactive farming versus reactive farming. Your business workload is such that you are getting seasonal jobs finished on time and investing the excess time available into the future success of your business. Investing in the future has many different faces: increase in acreage, increase in quality, flexible cross-trained employees, management that are free to invest their time in business aspects driving higher returns, faster returns, increased market perception, and the list goes on.

One of the ways which I view this in the business that I manage at the end of each year is to look at the total cost for managing each aspect of the farm. In the hand-managed vineyards that I am most familiar with, labor is always the largest cost of doing business. Anything worth looking at in a budget that can be broken into is smaller pieces to give a more accurate picture, should be. To show you what this looks like I am going to examine labor for the rest of the discussion and how to get more out of it.

Each hour that is worked by an individual in the business is allocated to each employee by the foreman and what they were doing at the time. As a budget tool it is important for me to understand how much it costs to do the varied tasks that a vineyard has to offer. There is a set of the same categories for each vineyard and orchard that I manage. During the budgeting period at the end of every year, I can cost out each activity in each location to see where the money went: mowing, general labor, weed-sprays, chemical sprays, leaf-thinning, irrigation, development, harvest, and whatever you may choose. Where did we overspend, where did we under-spend and why? (I'll write more on labor, control calculations to check for accuracy during budgeting, and how to view the separation of hourly versus piecework in another post.)

The key to the first tool is having the business set-up in a way that can collect the data, which facilitates how you want to use or cut that information and view it. In the example above, I talked about using the data at the end of the year for budgeting purposes, but I also look at this break down monthly as we progress throughout the year to see how the season or projects and our receivables are affecting the business. It also makes dealing with the bank a breeze when they have concerns over the state of the industry, seasonal issues or location of the line of credit at any point during the course of a season.

On to the second tool. Using the data that we have created and assessing for time savings. Not all tasks are associated with a major investment in time, and when we look at the labor distribution by category, we see the tasks which cost us the most are associated with the most time. This may seem obvious, but it gives us a road map for where we as managers should be focusing our thoughts in becoming more efficient growers. If I get a 10% cost reduction on mowing, which costs us $3,500 annually, it doesn't do as much for the company as a 10% reduction in a category carrying a $140,000 annual cost. So, choose to investigate efficiency in those categories that you can reap the most rewards.

Before I give an example, I want to help you understand how I view labor from an ethical standpoint. Reducing labor costs is a double edged sword. On one hand, you produced your crop for less money, and on the other hand, that money comes out of the pockets of your labor, which is ultimately tied to the well-being and sustainability of your workforce and their families. This is an important aspect to understand, especially for a small, high quality producer, because the retention of employees from year to year is the biggest benefit you have over the largest entities in your market: retained labor that understands your property and product goals from start to finish.

Remembering the statement above, I want you to see how we deal with the cost and time reduction in the labor of one vineyard from a recent real example. $140,000 was the actual cost associated with shoot, leaf and fruit thinning a 100-acre vineyard by hand for budgeting purposes. This was the largest cost for growing that vineyard, both in time and money. First, I addressed the category by asking what factors attributed to its use and what were their root cause. This is largely the cost of canopy management and is a necessary step in producing high quality grapes. The three main factors that determine the use of this category in a season are water management, nitrogen management and pruning accuracy.

Water Management: Management theory here needs to be based on the plant and soil alone, not the time of year. Years can be early and they can be late, but a plant can never flower before the buds break and the shoots elongate. The plants are predictable, not the season. Water management also includes berry size development. By understanding the timing of cell division post-bloom, a manager can achieve a more consistent berry size from year to year without as much seasonal swing in cluster size and weight, allowing pruning regimes and crop adjustments to be easier and more tailored.

In practice, this is a reallocation of resources. My foreman and I take on the task of managing the water from the beginning of May each year until the end of June. We meet twice daily at times, and at minimum weekly, to assess our goals and the blocks during this period. We take the management on our backs so that we are in control of our time and have the flexibility to prioritize the minor issues that arise each season. This doesn't mean that we eliminate the need for any thinning, but we make it manageable and skip the need for costly heavy adjustments.

Nitrogen Management: You can always add more, but you can't take it out once it's there. Only time and seasons of growth can do that. Be judicial with your additions of nitrogen, and write good notes. For us, our standard addition of nitrogen is 36 lbs per acre per year through the drip. Our first addition is right at active growth, and our second addition is after bloom. It doesn't always have to be like this. We have blocks that under perform due to thinner soils or varietals in locations that are not the most ideal and blocks that continuously over perform. Don't hesitate to change it up. Some blocks we hit with the full 36 lbs up front over two or three irrigation cycles at the start of the season. I have blocks that had too much nitrogen in them already, and I give them no nitrogen over a few seasons, until I see the response in the plants. Then, I slowly feed them what I want to be there. Water management is a good tool in nitrogen management, as well. Without water, nitrogen won't move into the plants, so having a more consistent soil water profile will ultimately make the block more predictable.

Pruning accuracy: This is a tool that is used by variety, vineyard location and field location within a block. Good pruning doesn't have to be the same everywhere. Some varieties such as Tempranillo, Mourvedre and Sangiovese are prolific producers and need to be single bud pruned. In the case of Tempranillo we did an internal study where we pruned a few rows to a single node and a few to double nodes. There was little difference in the total crop between the two sections maybe a 10% reduction, but the canopy density was nearly half and as a result we reduced the time to adjust the blocks by nearly half each season. The windward rows on the outside of a block many times will be left with more buds, and the end plants or gullies less. These tactics reduce the time to adjust anything that is not as consistent as the rest of the vineyard. The key is to be out in the vineyard and making these calls with your field managers as they occur, and follow up on the counts while they are doing the task, at least daily.

One word of caution in pruning. What you take off will not produce. Only thin to the comfort level of what your property can withstand. If you have frost risks on a yearly basis it's likely better to leave more early and take off more later when you are safe. If you are heat stress prone/sunburn (I would argue this is management related more than anything, but not always) then leave a little more to compensate for any issues that may arise and take care of them timely.

Using this type of approach in vineyard management, in conjunction with good notes that are followed up on each new season, allows you to achieve efficient, high quality production. To finish the example above using these tools and approaches, we reduced the labor in the 100 acre vineyard by $50,000 that year. This savings was directly attributed to having no leaf thinning at all and only 30 acres of light crop thinning to achieve our goals, a perfect storm. However, we didn't reduce our total labor cost. That remained the exact same as projected keeping our workers and their families happy. We were able to invest our time into the development of our younger vineyard getting the 15 acres we had planted that spring taken care of and some other non-grape farm properties taken care of that year. Our additional time-savings were used in cross-training our employees to take on more difficult tasks in the vineyard, increasing our labor flexibility in the future. We were able to take a week of time and have the whole vineyard crew make some block adjustments that were usually completed by our most experienced employees who then trained the others. In addition, we had time to go through the 100-acre vineyard completing very minor adjustments that would normally be skipped due to time constraints, improving the consistency within rows of the vineyard.

The third tool I use is priority management. Take care of the things that matter. Forget the rest. I use this system throughout the year in many different capacities. The easiest way for me to explain the use is through crop load management. I've used many different ways to estimate frost damage, freeze damage, block uniformity and crop loads, many of which are very time consuming in labor, data collection and processing. I'll write more on crop load management another time. For now, I'll just explain my approach to adjustment. To make things simple in the vineyard, we only invest our time into things that will result in the highest quality improvement. Blocks that rate at or near goals for the season are de-prioritized. I'll look at the data collected, drive through each block that needs an adjustment and make a new list of priorities. Those priorities are then assessed for timing by variety, location and labor considerations. It's much easier for a crew to adjust three blocks of Grenache in a row then to jump from one variety to the next and back again. Some varieties need more timely passes, others it is inconsequential as long as it's before véraison.

To summarize the three tools:

Organize your technology to support the way you farm.
Use the technology to give you focus and direction.
Prioritize your findings and execute.

Please feel free to comment or ask any questions. There is a lot to cover on this topic. If you have a topic that you would be interested in hearing my take on feel free to leave a request in the comments. The responses I received last week offline we great. Thank you!