Franklin, CT Restaurants, Restaurant Menus & Dining

Ernie & Sandy Staebner lead a group of wagons on a
carriage rally through their 380 acre farm.
Photo by Elaine Juska Keeley

 Although the town of Franklin is located within the “Greater Norwich” urban area for chamber of commerce purposes, Franklin is very specifically as un-urban as you can get for some very specific reasons. Named after founding father Ben in 1786, Franklin was established on seven hills.  Agricultural it began, but unlike many other towns, agricultural it has remained.  Although the number of working dairy farms has declined to three in recent years, Franklin’s farm families have worked with the state to insure that much of that open land cannot be sold for commercial development and used only for agriculture. One of those agrarian operations in is The Blue Slope Country Museum located on a working farm. This “museum” of agriculture and history is not at all just for looking but very much for doing.  Here are some things that are done at Blue Slope: operation of a horse-driven hay loader and stationary baler, training apprentice spinners, splitting stone for walls, tossing hay bales, training baby oxen to “work together as a team,” as well as plowing with Belgian draft horses “Four-A-Breast”. A recently organized event at Blue Slope is the annual Eastern Connecticut Draft Horse Association auction in which you can avail yourself of the opportunity to purchase such non gasoline burning antique horse drawn vehicles as a Surrey, Runabout, or, for when the snow flies, a Portland Cutter Sleigh. With such sparky and dedicated creativity, the family farm traditions will certainly keep on keeping on.

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