There Are Still Pioneers in America. Cole Summers Was One.
Social media is mostly garbage. My own feed is crammed with doomsday predictions and ads for scammy diets. But every once in a while, between the hashtags and the hysteria, a jewel presents itself.
Here’s what I mean: When he was six, Cole—whose family owns a farm in Beryl, Utah—started taking on the repair and maintenance for his family’s vehicles. Both of his parents are disabled: his father is a wheelchair-bound veteran; his mother is partially blind.
He started his first business, breeding and selling rabbits, at age seven. At nine, he started paying his own taxes. By ten, he had bought and was running a 350-acre farmstead where he raised goats and turkeys. For his eleventh birthday he bought himself a tractor.
Also: he transplanted trees; he wrote a feature-length film; he bought a run down house and renovated it himself. Oh, and he was a Bitcoin enthusiast, but also found a lot to admire in Warren Buffett. During his free time, he watched YouTube videos of Buffett and other business people talking about their achievements. He had never been to a movie theater.
Cole posted a video two months ago on Twitter. The blonde boy stood in front of his own property addressing the camera. “Not everybody thinks I am me, so here I am! I really am a 14 year-old homeschooler,” he said. “I really do spend all my time trying to work toward changing the business model of desert farming to quickly stop aquifer depletion while keeping thousands of acres from being turned into dust bowl farmlands.” Here’s how the video ended: “I am who I say I am.”
