My name is Frank Goodman, builder and owner of the Little Sugar River Farm. I was born in New York City in December 1959, and I grew up in suburban Westchester County. When I was 14, I went away to school at Phillips Academy in Andover MA. From there, I went to Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, where I studied French and Spanish. During my senior year, I spent a good deal of time in the wood shop developing skills which would stand me in good stead when it came time to create my home — the Little Sugar River Farm.

After a year working on a farm in Mexico, I came to the Midwest in 1987 to study agricultural sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I never left. Most of my work since that time has been in either agriculture or in the metal working trades.

Because I had always hoped to lead a rural life in a home of my own making, in 1996 I purchased 20 acres of land 30 miles south of Madison. I set out to build my home and create a small organic farm. 

We would like the Little Sugar Farm to be a refuge from the chaos and coarseness of modern life -- a place of peace and privacy, calm and order. Located on a small mostly organic farm surrounded on three sides by almost 2000 acres of state wildlife refuge, this is a spot where a person can feel a bit closer to nature's beauty. We hope to offer the possibility of proximity to natural processes: dramatic thunderstorms, dragonflies perched on sunlit walls, the muffled silence of a snowstorm, the chorus of spring peepers on an April evening.

My wife, Nancy Langston, a professor of environmental studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, welcomes you as well.