From Complexity to Clarity: How Vilicus Farms Scales Regenerative Agriculture with Farmbrite
- Joshua Brock
- 2 hours ago
- 5 min read
“We use Farmbrite for everything...tracking equipment, vehicles, parts, tasks... everything runs through it.”
Margo Marosok, Data/Office Manager
At Vilicus Farms in Hill County, Montana, scale isn’t just about acreage; it’s about responsibility.
Founded in 2009 with a vision of farming in harmony with nature, Vilicus spans more than 15,000 acres, integrates livestock grazing, and rotates over 20 crops across a seven-year cycle. Alongside production, the farm maintains rigorous certifications, including USDA Organic and Regenerative Organic Certified Silver. In the wide-open landscapes of Northern Hill County, Montana, Vilicus Farms is redefining what modern, large-scale organic agriculture can look like. Founded by Doug Crabtree and Anna Jones-Crabtree, this first-generation dryland farm has grown from 1,280 acres, built on a vision of working with nature, not against it.
Today, Vilicus Farms produces a diverse portfolio of organic heirloom and specialty crops, guided by regenerative practices that prioritize soil health, carbon sequestration, and pollinator-friendly conservation with its Bee Better Certified status. With over 20 crops in rotation and more than a quarter of its land dedicated to conservation, the farm is designed for resilience as much as productivity.
But Vilicus is more than a farm, it’s a model for the future of agriculture. Through its long-standing apprenticeship program and commitment to community, the team is helping cultivate the next generation of organic farmers across the Northern Great Plains, proving that sustainable farming can scale and lead.
But with that level of complexity comes a challenge: how do you track everything accurately, consistently, and in a way that supports both operations and certification?
That’s where Farmbrite came in. I spoke with Margo Marosok, Data/Office Manager at Vilicus Farms and Jessica Roberts, owner of Whole Farm Strategies, consulting for Vilicus Farms on sales, marketing and certifications.
Moving Beyond Spreadsheets to Full Operational Visibility
Before adopting Farmbrite, Vilicus relied on a patchwork of spreadsheets and accounting tools.
“We were tracking everything using spreadsheets and QuickBooks,” Jessica explained. But as operations grew more complex, it became clear that a more integrated system was needed, one that could handle traceability from field to final product.
After evaluating options, they chose Farmbrite for a simple reason: it could support the entire production chain.
From crop planning and cleaning to milling, processing, and bagging, along with livestock and equipment, Farmbrite offered a single platform to manage it all.
Managing a 15,000-Acre Operation In Real Time
At this scale, coordination isn’t optional—it’s critical.
Vilicus Farms manages a diverse team, including seasonal workers, across land where traveling from one end to the other can take 30–40 minutes. That distance alone creates communication challenges most farms never encounter.
Today, Farmbrite acts as the operational backbone of the farm.
“We use Farmbrite for everything,” shared Margo, who manages the farm’s data systems. “Tracking equipment, vehicles, parts, tasks...everything runs through it.”
To improve coordination even further, the team is transitioning field workers to mobile task management using tablets with cellular connectivity, enabling real-time updates from anywhere on the farm.
Certification Without the Chaos
For farms pursuing organic and regenerative certifications, record-keeping isn’t just helpful, it is mandatory.
Vilicus works with the Montana Department of Agriculture and must submit detailed documentation as part of its Organic System Plan (OSP), along with additional reporting for regenerative certification.
Farmbrite has become essential to that process.
“It’s critical for our record-keeping and reporting,” Margo noted. “We’ve built multiple custom reports specifically for certification requirements.”
From tillage reports to traceability documentation, the ability to generate accurate, audit-ready reports has significantly reduced the administrative burden and increased confidence during certification reviews.
Solving Complexity with the Right Features
As Vilicus scaled its use of Farmbrite, certain features became especially impactful. One standout example? Inventory filtering.
Early on, inventory tracking grouped everything, from crops to equipment, into a single view. That created friction when trying to manage and report on specific categories. With the introduction of filters, the team could quickly segment inventory by type: crop, seed, cleaned product, and more.
“That change made a huge difference,” Margo explained. “It simplified how we track and report everything.”
This kind of iterative improvement, driven by real customer feedback, has been key to making Farmbrite work for complex operations like Vilicus.
The Biggest Lesson: Inventory Accuracy Matters
Even with the right tools, scale introduces its own challenges. For Vilicus, the biggest operational insight came from inventory tracking.
Because the farm doesn’t currently use a physical scale, inventory counts rely on combine readings and bin capacity estimates. That can lead to discrepancies, situations where the system shows available inventory that isn’t actually there.
“It really highlighted the need to tighten up our inventory tracking,” Margo shared.
This wasn’t a failure of the system—it was a valuable learning moment. Farmbrite surfaced the issue, giving the team visibility into where processes needed refinement.
Built for Growth: From Crops to Production
Vilicus isn’t standing still. The farm is preparing to start up its own on-farm packing line for lentils and whole grains. Traditionally, Vilicus was sold almost exclusively by the truckload. Now they will be bagging 2,000# totes, along with both 25# and 5# bags, adding another layer of complexity to its already sophisticated system.
That means more inventory stages to track, more reporting requirements, and more coordination across teams.
With Farmbrite, they’re confident they have a platform that can grow alongside them.
Why Customer Support Still Matters Most
For all the features and functionality, one factor stood out in Vilicus’s decision, and continued use, of Farmbrite: customer support.
“For us, with how complex our operation is, customer service was a huge factor,” both Margo and Jessica emphasized.
They regularly collaborate with the Farmbrite team for troubleshooting, ideas, and improvements, turning their relationship into more of a partnership than a typical software experience.
Advice to Other Farmers: Choose What Fits Your Operation
When asked what advice they would give to other farms considering management software, the answer was clear: Choose a platform that fits your level of complexity.
For Vilicus Farms, that meant finding a system capable of handling scale, certification, and traceability, all while remaining usable for a diverse team.
And perhaps their philosophy is best summed up in a simple, tongue-in-cheek play on W. Edwards Deming's original quote shared during the conversation:
“In nature we trust. All others bring data.”
Turning Data into Better Farming
Vilicus Farms demonstrates what’s possible when the right tools meet the right mission.
By centralizing operations, improving visibility, and simplifying certification, Farmbrite helps transform complexity into clarity, allowing farms not just to manage their work but to continuously improve it.
And as Vilicus continues to grow, innovate, and refine its processes, one thing is certain: Better data leads to better decisions, and to better farming!
Joshua, his wife Jenn, and their dog Rooster live in North Central Pennsylvania. Joshua is the owner and operator of Hoffman Appalachian Farm, where they grow Certified Naturally Grown hops. Joshua has over twelve years of experience in growing crops, including growing in an organic system. In his spare time, he enjoys trail running, backpacking, and cycling.