A silver Bell 505 helicopter settles onto a grassy strip. Nearby, a 636-horsepower Land Rover Defender OCTA, a pair of electric motorcycles, and a robin’ s egg blue Mercedes-AMG G63 gleam in the sun. Music drifts from a tented stage. Barbecue smoke hangs in the air. Locals gather, linger, and enjoy the grounds. This is not an auto show, but rather the latest edition of The Land Report magazine’ s Gear Review, hosted for the second time at Woodlife Farm Market in New Lebanon, New York, where the Hudson Valley meets the Berkshires. Into this scene, Mike Patten walks with his wife, Samantha, moving easily among friends, family, neighbors, business partners, and curious passersby.
To the casual eye, the event feels like part community festival, part luxury-gear showcase, part family reunion. For Patten, it is something deeper: another chapter in a long story shaped by loss, rebuilding, reinvention, and, ultimately, belonging. The market itself, housed in a restored former Christmas tree farm he bought in 2020, has become a hub for locals and visitors drawn by maple syrup, barbecue, and something harder to quantify: community.
66 // BERKSHIRE MAGAZINE Spring 2026
THE LONG GAME
MIKE PATTEN’ S WOODLIFE FARM VISION UNITES FAMILY AND COMMUNITY
B y S c o t t E d w a r d A n d e r s o n
P h o t o s b y G u s t a v S c h m i e g e I I I
His relationship with The Land Report goes back to 2009, when the real estate market collapsed and Patten’ s world nearly collapsed with it. A profile of his family’ s business helped him get in the door of potential investors. At the time, he was deeply invested in large-parcel real estate. Overnight, the model became untenable.“ The land we owned all went from 100 cents on the dollar to 10 cents,” he recalls.“ And even at 10 cents, nobody wanted it. I had a good-sized company, a lot of payroll, and nothing worked. So, I had to reinvent.”
While others retreated, Patten walked into banks most people were afraid to approach. Instead of seeing wreckage, he saw possibility. What he found were what he calls“ fractured condos,” half-sold developments stalled by the crash, with banks desperate for resolution. He scraped together capital, bought deeply discounted loan notes from banks( essentially purchasing the debt on these properties at a fraction of the face value), priced units honestly below market, marketed aggressively, and sold fast.
One early deal set the template. Patten bought a $ 30 million note for“ maybe five or six million,” sold 76 units in about ten days, and repeated the strategy again and again. Over the next several years,