West Virginia’s Mine Land Restorer: George Patterson

From Mine Land to Farmland: George Patterson

Twenty-six year-old farmer George Patterson expands on his family’s coal-mining heritage with a new enterprise—reclaiming abandoned mine land to grow food and restore the land for generations to come. 

When George’s dad told him he could go to business school or go into business, he set up shop in a shipping container on a mine site, with air mattress and shotgun in tow. George worked by day and binged YouTube by night to teach himself the art and science of agriculture as an economic driver. Now he’s got a full-fledged farm in not one, but seven shipping containers, with four full-time employees and zero air mattresses. And he’s sleeping in a real bed, bought and paid for with his hard-earned profits. Today, business is booming, but it’s not about profit for George, it’s about helping a community find hope in good hard work and fantastically delicious food, food that is truly wild and wonderful like its West Virginia home.