Spotlight on our Ag Team: Meet Kaylan

Celebrating Women’s History Month here at Davis includes indulging our sense of pride in our agricultural sales team which is 75% female! In a field that is still mostly male-dominated, our women agricultural specialists hold their own with a wide range of expertise and experience.

Kaylan with her close friend, five-year-old Redford, who also goes by "Reddy," sometimes "Harry Chuck Wagon," occasionally "Tickled, when he is ornery."

One of those women is Kaylan Pollard, our Agricultural Sales Manager, whose territory is the California Central Valley. We thought you might like to know a little more about her.

Kaylan’s connection to agriculture is via horses and livestock. A life-long horsewoman, Kaylan grew up surrounded by racing thoroughbreds, starting out right here in the Bay Area.

“My dad, Tom, was racehorse trainer,” she told us. “He worked at Bay Meadows in San Mateo. Being around racehorses, which are bred to run, gave me a love for horses that has never left me.”

Kaylan’s family moved around the country a bit as her father took on horse training in Delaware and then Texas. Kaylan and her twin sister eventually made full circle and came back to California to live with their aunt after the loss of first her mom, Karen, then her dad.

“Losing my parents so young was tough,” she told us. “But my parents gave me my love for animals, and I took that legacy with me when I went to college at California State University Fresno, majoring in livestock production.”

“At CSU Fresno, I also played Division 1 Women’s Softball (go Bulldogs!) at the Margie Wright Diamond. Just outside the stadium is the CSU Fresno Vineyard, which now has an EnviroMonitor system installed in it. Another nice full circle.”

The CSU-Fresno vineyard just outside the stadium where Kaylan went to college, now has an EnviroMonitor system installed in it.

Kaylan’s still a horsewoman through and through. She and her older sister have two thoroughbred mares and three geldings. She also has a few head of Black Angus cattle and bucking heifers, two dogs, and a cat.

“And at the ranch where I live here in Valley Springs, California, we have several stocked ponds, so I guess you can say I have some fish too!”

Kaylan's other horse Moonshine and her dog Stella help her check on the EnviroMonitor systems at her ranch in the California Central Valley.

Before joining the Davis team two years ago, Kaylan’s agricultural experience included working with processing tomatoes and with hydrogel soil amendments for moisture retention. That experience has given her an even wider understanding of the issues farmers face.

Kaylan, like all of us, is looking forward to post-pandemic times when she can get back to traveling and trade shows.

“My favorite part of my job is meeting farmers and exploring solutions and improvements. I’m usually designing the perfect EnviroMonitor system in my head within a few minutes of hearing about what they grow and where their farm is. For California farmers, regardless of crop, I can usually start with soil moisture and irrigation, because in California, water is a resource no one can afford to waste. And now that we have the new EnviroMonitor Irrigation Bundles [EnviroMonitor Irrigation Bundle with Watermark Soil Moisture Sensors and EnviroMonitor Irrigation Bundle with Sentek Drill and Drop Moisture Sensor], I can have them up and running as soon as possible.”

For now, if you want to know more about installing a Davis system on your Central Valley farm, you can usually find Kaylan at her remote Davis desk. If she’s not there, she’s likely out on Reddy, her beautiful gelding whose auburn mane matches her own.

“Reddy picked me,” she said. “He was literally a wild horse on 400 acres, and I tamed him. I’ve known him his whole life, but we’ve been especially good friends for the last three years.”

We think Reddy made a good choice in Kaylan, and this month especially, we are patting ourselves on the back for following his good judgement.