Dec 9, 2025

CENIC and Iron Horse Vineyards Celebrating One-Year Anniversary Of Innovation

Sent by Joy Sterling, CEO of Iron Horse Vineyards, on 8 December 2025:

It has been a year, almost to the day, since we first gathered in my living room to imagine the possibility of creating a Connectivity Test Bed at Iron Horse. To mark the anniversary, I’ve been reflecting on how far we’ve come and how extraordinary this collaboration has already become. One of the clearest signs of our momentum is the level of attention our Test Bed is now attracting from leaders in AI, advanced technology, rural broadband, and universities.

A large part of this rising visibility is thanks to CENIC. Their credibility, statewide reach, and deep relationships across universities, labs, and scientific institutions have opened doors we could never have reached alone. But it is equally clear that the project itself has real traction.

In just twelve months, we have a fully connected 10 Gbps living laboratory linked to CalREN and the National Research Platform. Soil, air, weather, CO₂, and water-pressure sensors are feeding continuous data, and the HPWREN fire-watch cameras are fully online with the WiFIRE Lab at UC San Diego. Dashboards are taking shape, and a drone program is underway, with 360-degree imaging next in line.

Part of the beauty of this project is the inherent degree of difficulty: our remoteness and complex terrain. These factors make us an ideal proving ground, and all the more remarkable that AT&T delivered in record time.

Collaborations with Sonoma State and Santa Rosa Junior College are blossoming. Students are visiting the vineyard. Faculty are beginning to engage with our data. Coursework is being explored. This is exactly the educational impact we hoped to achieve: opening doors for young people who may never have considered agriculture as a field of innovation.

What’s resonating is the combination of visionary infrastructure and a compelling real-world use case. The fact that it is all open source and that we are sharing the data freely shows that what we are building at Iron Horse is not just a vineyard installation but a model for next-generation agriculture, sustainability, research, and education. And our goal - not to increase yields, but to make even better wine - has captured the imagination. Each of these elements is meaningful on its own. But together, they form something much larger: a new model for agricultural connectivity when industry, researchers, technologists, and educators come together with purpose.

As we look to the year ahead, our north star is becoming increasingly clear: the creation of a full, 3-D digital twin of the vineyard using Gaussian splatting. This breakthrough makes a continuous, living, updatable model not only possible but practical - something agriculture has never had before.

Vineyards are notoriously difficult to model: moving leaves, shifting light, complex canopies, thousands of repeating shapes. Yet Gaussian splatting captures all of it beautifully in three dimensions, in a way older methods simply couldn’t. The result is a real-time, photorealistic portrait of the estate that evolves as new data flows in. It becomes a living model of Iron Horse - one that helps us see patterns and understand change by transforming the vineyard from a landscape we observe into an ecosystem we can understand with far greater depth and adaptability.

The digital twin will show us how and why the vines respond to shifting conditions, help us anticipate frost, stress, water needs, and disease risk. It will allow us to identify correlations among environmental variables, explore “what if” scenarios, support both teaching and research, offer students a new entry point into agriculture, and give scientists a platform to test ideas that can scale across the state. It will advance sustainability by revealing relationships we’ve never been able to see before.

Digital twins will soon be essential in agriculture, and what we are creating together is truly pioneering.

Adding to this is the complementary role of Emergent Connext in creating a parallel, business-facing test using SoilTech and Sensoterra sensors deployed across both test and control blocks. As they continue to expand their sensor network, Emergent is demonstrating how real-time data collection drives improvements in productivity and resource use. Their work demonstrates the practical, day-to-day value of connectivity and field-level data for farmers.

As I look back on this first year, I’m struck not only by what we’ve accomplished, but by the spirit of collaboration that has brought it to life. Each of you brings something unique and invaluable to this project. This initiative works because the people behind it believe in it and in each other.

We are still at the beginning, and that is the most exciting part. The groundwork is in place. Now comes the phase where we build upward toward the digital twin, deeper data 
integration, broader educational reach, and new collaborations we have yet to imagine.

Thank you for your commitment, your creativity, and your generosity of spirit. Thank you for seeing what this could become even before it existed. And thank you for helping create something that has the potential to shape the future of connected, sustainable agriculture.

Here’s to year two, to discovery, to innovation, and to the joy of building something extraordinary together.

With all my very best,

Joy

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