Meet-A-Student: Cole Burkhart
- Laura Wayte
- Jul 3
- 2 min read
Age: 24
From: Portland
Graduated from: Colby College in Sustainable Design
Favority Animal: Piglets!
Cole Burkhart joined us this summer and provides a great example of someone working in their field after college. The 2024 graduate of Colby College designed his major around sustainability, focusing on environmental science, ecology, architecture, design and art.
"I ended up focusing a lot on sustainable agriculture," he said. "I want to take what I learned there and what I'm learning here and in whatever community I end up in, I want to be able to help make the land and the people more healthy by growing food and taking care of the land and teaching people."
For the first year after college, Cole worked on Catalina Island as an environmental education instructor at the Catalina Environmental Leadership Program. The campers would come to the island for week-long stays participating in hiking, snorkeling and ecology lessons.
Then, he looked for sustainable farm work and was happy to find a site so close to home!
"I was doing a bunch of searching online for farms where I could go and learn and work a lot and get a lot of experience," he said. "I found Deck on a sustainable ag job board - that's close to home! Christine responded to me so quickly and I was impressed with the communication and efficiency compared to all the other places I had researched."
Cole enjoyed photography a lot in his college art classes and looks forward to documenting his time at Deck Family Farm. He also studied print making, sculpture and ceramics.
The first farm jobs Cole is engaged in are on the pig and poultry teams.
"I've been learning a ton! I've worked on farms before but not with livestock," he said. "So I'm learning a whole new set of skills. Working with two different sides of the farm at once is keeping it fresh."
He is also enjoying the lifestyle on the farm, living in a platform tent by the creek and getting to know everyone. He has been assigned dinner preparation with fellow intern Jacob Struble and says they've had fun cooking a few meals already, including pork chops with potato salad, spaghetti bolognese and spicy beef lettuce wraps.
He said piglets are his favorite of the farm animals because they are so comical. The diet of our piglets includes discarded milk from the dairy, and they really love it.
"When I bring them the milk they go wild. It's a mob of piglets in the milk bucket. It's really funny!"
