1. Sankow Beaver Brook Farm
City: Lyme, CT
Category: Shopping
Telephone: (860) 434-2843
Address: 139 Beaver Brook Rd.
Description: Stanley and Suzanne Sankow have a flock of over 700 Romney sheep that live on the farm and donate their wool, and the Sankows make blankets, hats, scarves, sweaters, and mittens, sold in a small shop on the farm. However, the farm also has cows and East Frisian sheep, which they milk to make cheeses, like Nehantic Abbey and a nice feta. They also have a thick farmstead yogurt that will completely change your ideas about this too often mass-produced breakfast food. You can also buy chops and sausages, vegetables, shepherd’s pie, and ice cream here at the shop. Sankow’s cheese is considered some of the best in the US, and is at the forefront of the new movement that will hopefully put America back on top with the great cheese makers of Europe. But like many Connecticut farmers, they wear many hats. Theirs happen to be wool.
2. Hartman Park
City: Lyme, CT
Category: Tours & Attractions
Description: In the Hamburg section of Lyme is a small park that contains some of the most interesting ruins in the state. The entrance is on Gungy Road about a mile from where you turn off Beaverbook Road. Trails are marked with painted metal disks, and you should study the map to find where you want to go. The orange-blazed Heritage Trail is probably the one you want to stick to, with barn and house foundations, piles of stones from various farm buildings, and the most impressive feature, the Three Chimneys “fort” on a ridge. It may be one of the original Puritan forts that Lyonel Gardiner was commissioned to build in 1634, but archaeologists are not sure. It fits the layout of one of these lost forts, though it may be a very unusual site of some other sort. You’ll have to see it for yourself. There are also charcoal kiln remnants, a mill site, and an ancient cemetery—if you can find it—just past a nice cascade in the power line clearing; take a right off the orange trail onto a yellow connector trail and it will be on your right at the top of a small hillock.