family background/ Kayla earned her psychology degree from Eastern Washington University and plans to return to university to obtain a degree in viticulture and enology. She’s married to Erin Braich and is the daughter of Cheryl Emineth.
age/ 30
hometown/ Kennewick, Washington
crop/ wine grapes
role/ vineyard manager
business/ Hedges Family Estate

How did you get your start?

I grew up spending a lot of time at my grandparents’ hobby farm. My mom was a single mom and my grandparents helped to raise me, so I would spend every day before school and after school with them, helping them with things around their property. I loved it so much. I decided to go into FFA in high school, where I spent two years as president, and I ran our horticulture program.

Kayla Braich, a young grower from Kennewick, Washington

We went to nationals in Indianapolis — so, I had a lot of exposure in agriculture and other commodities when I young. Then after high school, I decided to go off to college for something completely different. I went to school for psychology, and I wanted to get out of farming. I wanted to move to a big city and see what that was like.

You know, be around hustle and bustle and have new experiences, learn new things. While working on my psychology degree, I met my future husband, then packed up to move to Hawaii for his graduate degree. At that time, I got involved working with a nonprofit, rescuing excess food from restaurants, catered events and farms.

It was those connections to people in the farming community that made me realize I had to get back into agriculture. The love that I have for nature and the community brought me back. When my husband and I moved back to Washington, I didn’t have many connections in the farming community, especially in wine grapes.

I was able to get a job in a tasting room to learn the basics about wine and fell in love with the context behind a bottle of wine. I landed a summer internship at Ciel du Cheval Vineyard to learn from the vineyard manager.

What drew you into the field?

I think when I was working in the tasting room, I knew that wasn’t where my heart was. My love was being outside and working, hand-in-hand with Mother Nature.

It was in those moments when I was in my early 20s, and having to really get some courage to reach out and ask, “Are there internship possibilities for me? I don’t have a degree in viticulture and enology. I don’t have a degree in agriculture. But I love it. Are there any positions for me available?” It turns out there were.

Even though it was a very difficult and humbling experience to realize that I didn’t go to school for what I really wanted to do and go back to square one. I’d have to start from the bottom and work my way up to understand what I was doing out there.

What are you learning now as a vineyard manager?

In 2021 I had the opportunity to step into the role as vineyard manager. Knowing my limited education around agriculture, I definitely faced some challenges. I love to learn, so there’s nothing out there that I can’t work toward to figure out. But there have been times, especially in those early days, I thought I could rely on what I’d learned and the historical data for the farm.

I learned some valuable lessons from pest problems, particularly cutworms. At that time, we had not had a cutworm issue in one of those blocks in our data. I thought we wouldn’t have a problem with it that year or the next year. It wasn’t something on my mind when it struck during bud-break time. We ended up with an outbreak where a quarter of the block’s buds were completely eaten.

In that moment I was very humbled, feeling that I should have been way more proactive about situations like this that can arise. I immediately called my mentors to learn what the heck happened, and the former vineyard manager told me that “just because it doesn’t happen one year doesn’t mean it can’t happen this year, the next year or the next year.”

He advised a simple monitoring solution that sounded silly at first but works: You just put some sticky cards or tape around the base of the trunk to catch them when they try to climb up. But you’ve got to do what needs to be done to keep these pests off. It was then that I learned the importance of proactive approaches.

Now I look at every single possibility that could go wrong, or what may go right in the vineyards. Times like these have been easier to move forward when I rely on my mentors, believe in myself, in the decisions that I make, and having some thorough thought process as to why we make particular decisions.