Gregory Goodwin & The Gentlemen’s Farmstead
Photography: Carter Fish
“I grew up in a town called Rocky Point, right near Port Jefferson on Long Island,” Gregory starts. “I wasn’t out, but I always felt different, and I was bullied at school. My parents moved us two towns over to Mount Sinai so I could switch schools at the end of 8th Grade, but I never fit in. To get away, I went to Chile as an exchange student in 11th Grade. …My only real escape as a kid was with animals. My parents were reluctant to get a dog, but I began volunteering at Save-A-Pet Animal Shelter as often as I could and used to stop there on the way home from school to spend time with the animals.”
“I went to Coastal Carolina University and was a member of a fraternity, and it was really the first time I ever felt popular. After college I got a job in Boston, and then moved to Manhattan a couple of years later for a job in software sales. …And on my second day in New York I met Kyle Rush! He’s from the high desert in California and went to Cal State Fullerton, he’s an engineer who’d played an active role working on technological aspects of Obama’s re-election in 2012…and he had only moved to Manhattan a few days before! …Needless to say we got together…and lived together for eight years in the City, quite happily - but always feeling like city dwelling was more a means to an end, and never really feeling like we were where we would end up, or that we’d found ‘home’.”
“When covid hit, we rented a house close to where I grew up in Long Island - even though everything Long Island had been anathema to me as a kid - and I had the chance to indulge my love of animals and, more generally, getting into nature. We had chickens and ducks, and a garden…and the whole experience of what I call ‘farmsteading’ was transformative for me. …And that’s when I started the @GentlemensFarmstead Instagram - which was a pretty immediate hit, and now has twenty-something thousand followers. …It turns out that covid had created a national wave of like-minded interest in farming and gardening.”
“We knew we were ready to make our permanent move to the country and scrambled around looking to buy a property where I could establish a farm-like environment,” Gregory recalls. “My Aunt and Uncle had a gracious and quintessentially New England home near Hartford that we used to visit for Thanksgiving and special summer weekends when I was a kid. The place was an escape from reality for me, and I wanted to recreate the sensations and warm feelings of visiting that home in a home of my own. …But it was 2021, and we were outbid eighteen times before we landed here in Katonah. …This house needed to be totally updated - and Kyle and I immediately remodeled the kitchen ourselves. We fell in love with the property itself and the location next to neighbors on a quiet suburban street in a neighborhood with a rural character. It really reminded me of my aunt and uncle’s place outside Hartford and ‘felt like home’ as soon as we saw it. …And it had the pool that Kyle wanted!”
“The chickens and ducks moved with us from Long Island, and five days later the goats and sheep moved-in and began getting to work removing the invasives and clearing a pasture in the back of the property,” Gregory smiles. “We had Thanksgiving Dinner for twenty-two only five weeks after moving in, and have been busy hosting family gatherings and lots of friends coming to visit for weekends ever since. We feel the house and the property have a ‘come in and make yourself comfortable’ vibe. Along the way we’ve added some rabbits, exotic hens, geese - who protect the chickens from the many aerial predators, and Kune Kune pig…who had some piglets. It’s our escape!”
“And maybe the greatest part of being a farmsteader is how it allows us to invest in and connect us with the local community,” Gregory declares. “For starters, we have a small farm stand at the end of the driveway for eggs and some of the vegetables we grow, and maintain a ‘come by and take what you’d like’ policy - and we think that makes our neighborhood feel even more neighborhoodie and our neighbors feel more like friends. There’s something very special about where we live. All the reservoirs and nature preserves and dirt roads, and the shared experience of the people who are interested if not passionate about farming, gardening, animals, and nature.”
“I’ve been able to connect with other folks in the local community who are doing one sort of farmsteading or another. In May,” Gregory elaborates, “I held a Swap Meet and Private Sale, with a half-dozen local exhibitors, including Elisa from Longfield Farm in New Canaan, Fairchester Farms, Jonny who has @crested_chicken and is known for raising Polish Hens, Christopher Spitzmiller, @thefergusonsfarm, and a bunch of other great local farmers and farmsteaders. It was oversubscribed and very well-received. We had a contest to see whose chickens laid the finest eggs that was a lot of fun! And so I’m looking into repeating the experience here at our property, or maybe in some other community-oriented format. I have a full-time job in software sales, and I’m not hawking anything, but I like the idea of having some kind of an agricultural network or club, maybe even a physical space like a grange, that could serve as a meeting place for the ‘agricultural’ community. I did major in Resort Tourism Management in college. I’m not really sure what direction to take it in, but I can feel that the Gentlemen’s Farmstead brand strikes a chord for a lot of folks.”
“...As luck would have it, one of the other local farmsteaders we’ve met is Martha Stewart. Last year we were invited to Easter at Martha’s and she and Kyle began discussing a home technology that she had imagined for years. In May, they announced the launch of their AI-powered home management platform called HINT, Home Intelligence,” Gregory says proudly. “Martha came to our Swap Meet and brought home a few prized chickens and hatching eggs...and playfully told me I should get ready because Hint was going to be the next big thing for the home.”
“Of course our greatest joy is our two-year old daughter Hunter, who’s already begun to get to know some of the gentler animals and to explore the property. I’m 38 and Kyle is 41, and although we’ve both always felt we were meant to be parents, we waited a long time before having a baby,” Gregory reflects. “I hope she’ll grow up with a love of animals, and maybe even an appreciation for how hard work - like all the chores around the farm - is its own reward.
…Whatever happens, I know we’re ‘home’!”
