Idaho resident Kaylee Lierman combines farming with robotics

She’s the president of her local Future Farmers of America chapter and a CSI dual enrollment student. In her free time, she helps out on her family’s farm and raises show cattle. She’s also a member of Haywired, one of the local FIRST Robotics teams.

Most recently, at the end of the FIRST Robotics Competition held on March 21 through 23, she was named one of the two Dean’s Lists finalists in the state of Idaho.

This week, on April 17 through April 20, she’s headed to the FIRST Worlds Championship in Houston.

“It means a lot to me that my team felt that I was enough to be nominated,” she said. “They felt that I had done enough for our team and I was a contributing member.”

When she was 5 years old, Kaylee and her family moved from Fort Worth, Texas, to Filer to live on their family farm. The Liermans were one of the first German families to move to Filer in 1915. Kaylee is a fifth-generation famer.

Three years later, she began raising and showing cattle in 4-H, traveling around the West in competitions. As she got older, Kaylee began winning titles.

“I found my love of showing cows through a friend of mine,” Kaylee said. “She was like, ‘Hey, you should buy a heifer and come show with me,’ and I was like, ‘Okay!’ I started showing cows around Idaho and in Utah. That’s probably my biggest passion.”

At 8 years old, she and her brother joined Haywired, and eventually, Kaylee discovered a talent for art and design. As the team competed in competitions over the years, she began designing the team’s robots and creating engineering portfolios, which were snapshots of the team’s projects.

Kaylee combines her farming background with robotics because with the influx of technological innovations, the two industries work in tandem.

“In recent years, the ag industry has become a lot more technological, especially with mechanics and tractors… It’s a lot more intertwined than you might think,” she said.

The team’s robot this year is named Delilah, wears felt cow ears, and is bespeckled with black dots. In action, Delilah’s programmed to complete a game called Mosaic, during which the robot picks up pixelated magnets and creates a picture.

Kaylee takes her experience and pays it forward. She’s written STEAM camp curriculums for Haywired, and mentored the Native Legos, one of the only Native American FIRST Robotics teams, located in Owyhee, Nebraska.

The Haywired team also talked to the Jae Foundation and represented them during the FIRST Competition, which is integral to the team’s agricultural values.

According to the National Rural Health Association, farmers are 3.5 times more likely to die by suicide in comparison to the general population.

Kaylee wants to change these stigmas and share the true impact of farming with her community.

“There’s a (stereotype) that farmers are kind of dumb (and) they don’t really know anything… I don’t think a lot people realize that we feed everyone else. We’re a part of the 2% that feeds the 98%, and farmers know a lot more than you might think, like cows. They know their cows in and out. There’s a lot more real-world skills that you learn in farming…

“There’s so much that farmers do for the world.”

After graduation, Kaylee wants to go to college and study animal science or agricultural business. Later, she wants to move back to Idaho and continue working on the farm, raising her cows, and mentoring robotics teams.

She already knows where she’ll build her house on the vast and rolling green acres of her family’s land — right across the street from her parents.

Kaylee is working to raise funds for her trip this week. If you’d like to support her, visit https://gofund.me/6684cc0a.