Fable Farmstead

We’re all sick today, but still celebrating this goofy farmer dada’s birthday! 🧡

📢 Join Us for an Exciting Talk on Non-Chemical Browntail Moth Removal! 📢

Mark your calendars for Saturday, November 2nd at 12:30 PM at the Freeport Community Library, where Winslow will be introducing Fable Forestry and presenting our new initiative to tackle the Browntail Moth (BTM) problem—without pesticides! 🐛

Learn how we’re using cutting-edge technologies to scale up BTM removals in an eco-friendly way, protect forest health and communities. Don’t miss this opportunity to find out how innovation is paving the way for safer, more sustainable pest control solutions.

🗓️ When: Saturday, November 2nd, 12:30 PM
📍 Where: Freeport Community Library

See you there! Let’s work together for a healthier future! 💚

Today we’re showering some love on our two amazing barn kitties, Mitchell and Ledge! 🐈🐈 These two aren’t just the friendliest, most patient, and happiest hunters around - they’re also beloved members of our farm herd and absolute champions when it comes to putting up with all the farm kid shenanigans! 🧡

Mitchell, our gentle giant, and Ledge, our little explorer, not only keep the barn mouse (and chipmunk)-free but are always up for a cuddle or a quick game with the kids. Whether it’s letting the kiddos pick them up and drag them around or following us around for farm chores, these two just roll with it all. These kitties are just as much a part of the family as our indoor kitties.

We feel so lucky to have them brighten our days with their purrs, playful antics, and their never-ending patience. Mitchell and Ledge, you’ve captured our hearts and made this farmstead a happier place for everyone. 🐾💛

Our family has been soaking up every moment of this beautiful shift from summer to fall! 🌾🍎 As the days get cooler, we’ve been spending more time in the kitchen, baking up all the seasonal goodness. From warm apple pies filled with orchard-fresh apples to homemade granola packed with oats, nuts, and a touch of cinnamon – the farmhouse smells like fall, and our hearts are full. 🥧🍯

When we’re not in the kitchen, we’ve been hiking around the farm on the trails to watch the leaves slowly turn to shades of gold and crimson. It’s the perfect way to welcome this cozy season and connect with nature as it transforms around us. The crisp air and vibrant colors remind us that change can be both beautiful and peaceful.

As we transition into fall, we’re embracing the slower pace, finding joy in simple moments, and preparing for the season ahead. Whether it’s a warm slice of pie shared around the table or a quiet hike to marvel at the changing trees, this time of year encourages us to pause, savor, and reflect. 🍁✨

In focusing on infrastructure the past few seasons, and harvesting our own pine for timber frame farm structures (e.g., Tool Rack, Chicken + Goat Barn, Horse House, Mush Room teaching spaces), we’re spending more time in the woods. This has meant increased contact with the toxic hairs of the invasive Browntail Moth, or BTM; for non-Mainers, skin contact creates a weeks-long reaction similar to poison ivy, and (if inhaled) hairs can cause respiratory distress. 🐛

With commercial drone certification, Winslow has been trimming winter BTM nests around the farm, but these tools are not well-suited to deal with BTM at farm scale. So, we’ve initiated a sister-startup, in Fable Forestry. 🌳

In collaboration with arborists and robotics engineers, we’re developing a grand-funded method to geofence and scale removal of winter BTM nests across Maine, harvesting and upcycling them into biochar. In agriculture, biochar has been widely recognized for its nutrient and water-holding capacities, making biochar an increasingly important component of sustainable agriculture and carbon sequestration solutions.

As our interdisciplinary teams crank on a prototype for BTM removals this March 2025 (yes, you can now book our removal services in Freeport, Brunswick, and Harpswell), our hope is this generalizable method can export to other invasive forests pathogens (e.g., Emerald Ash Borer, Asian Longhorn Beetle).

Click the link in our bio for a 90-second video about this work!

Sooo you’ve probably heard of PFAS, and how farms across the country have been finding elevated levels of these “forever chemicals” in their soils, from the spread of contaminated sludge as fertilizer, decades ago.

Well, about a year after purchasing our farm, we were told that some of the new-to-us beautiful fields had received applications of contaminated sludge in the 1990s. Upon further testing, we discovered that the very field we had anticipated planting all of our crops was, in fact, no longer suitable to grow food for human or animal consumption. As you can imagine, we were devastated. But also grateful, as we hadn’t yet started growing in the road-side field.

Since then, we’ve reworked our farm design to grow our crops in a lab-tested clean field (though much farther away from electrical, water, and the Farmstand). But this discovery has deepened our commitment to protecting the health of the land, our crops, and our community.

So, we’re teaming up with leaders in the field (hehe) from Bates College and Yale University for grant funded research to better understand the effects of PFAS on our soil and find scalable solutions to this crisis.

We’re dedicated to being part of the solution, and this research is a critical step. Finding ways to restore the integrity of our land is one way for us to stay true to our value of making food and farming more accessible. 🔬🌾

📷: , throwback to when we first acquired this gorgeous property!

Fable Farmstead is a mission-driven, small family farm and apiary located on Wabanaki land in Freeport, Maine. We focus on mixed vegetables, honey, eggs, mushrooms, and pork.

Given our backgrounds, we are also passionate about agricultural innovation and research, with the aim of making farming more accessible and easier to do. Farming, after all, is one of the most important jobs 😉 who doesn’t love to eat?!

If you had asked us 10 years ago if farming was in our future, we probably would have said no (look at these young and naive faces 😂). At the time we were both at studying and researching our butts off. Winslow was at the School of Social Work where he got his PhD in Social Work and I was at the where I got my Masters of Public Health.

While our backgrounds are not traditionally associated with agriculture, accessibility of nutrient dense foods (public health) and preconditions for successful growth (social work) indeed are.

We believe in the power of food as the single most important unifier in our world: everyone needs to eat. And through this unifying basic need, we can build a healthy community.

Fun fact - our first date was at , right across the street from the School of Social Work in 2014!

👋🏼 We’re a bit overdue for some introductions, so for those of you who are newly following us, we are Fable Farmstead!

My name is Laura, and along with my husband Winslow, our three farm kiddos Finley, Thea, and Anno, our farm pup Teddy, our indoor kitties Foxy and Chovey, our barn kitties Mitchell and Ledge, our goats Simon and Garfunkel, our ponies Ruthie and Rose, our rooster Octavius, and our many laying hens and countless honeybees, we’re thrilled you’re joining us on this journey. 👨🏻‍🌾👩🏻‍🌾👧🏻👧🏻👶🏻🐕🐈🐈🐈🐈🐐🐐🐴🐴🐓🐝

Over the next few days we’ll be posting with more fun tidbits about us, give you a sneak peek into life on the farm, and share some exciting updates on what we’ve been working on this summer.

As always, we’re so glad to have you along on our journey ✨

📷:

What’s the best part of July in Maine? BLUEBERRIES! The heavy heat and humidity of the past few weeks finally broke, so we celebrated by going on a hike to pick some Maine wild blueberries 🫐

We put on our favorite adventure dresses from (use code LAURA10 for 10% off), filled our mini foraging basket with our favorite gathering cups, applied lots of sunscreen and bug spray, and off we went! We made lots of new friends in the doggos that we passed and Inchy the Inchworm on one of the footbridges. And we picked blueberries! Though admittedly, not many made it home.

This is always on the Summer Adventures To Be Had list - thank you for conserving these beautiful acres of trails and native blueberry barrens!

That farm kid life! At least they’re washable ✨

Homesteading and farming are all about learning new skills - it’s one of the best parts of this life.

This week we’ve been goat-sitting for some of our favorite farm friends and their sweet dairy goat. We’ve never had a dairy animal before, so this is very exciting for us!

Simon and Garfunkel are very curious about this newcomer, but are being respectful of the electric fence. The chickens though are a bit peeved that they’ve been kicked out of one of their favorite hang out spots.

What should we do with all of this fresh goat milk??

If you look carefully, you can see that our bees are tending eggs (lower left, look like little grains of rice) and larvae at different stages of development.

Our bees are thriving this year, so the next step is to add the honey supers so we can harvest some precious honey 🍯

Summer in Maine! It’s here!

On the farm, our favorite sign of summer’s arrival is the curly green garlic scape that always seems to be ready right around the solstice.

And as soon as the scapes are ready, it’s time to go down the street to to pick up some fresh lobbies for supper, shuck some sweet corn, and watch a summer thunderstorm from the porch. Am I dreaming??

These super cute, sustainable, cozy outfits are thanks to (use code Laura10 to save 10%)

When kids have the opportunity to help with meaningful tasks, they give their all. As much as we can and as long as it’s safe, we encourage our kiddos to join in with what we’re doing on the farm.

After all, isn’t this how we’re supposed to learn?

Celebrating the first thunderstorm of the season on our new porch with the perfect spring supper: asparagus, fiddlehead, shiitake, and leek quiche made with the richest duck eggs from our friends ⛈️

It’s been two years since our takeover, and so many changes have happened in our lives and on our farm. But one thing that definitely hasn’t changed? We still eat these pancakes every weekend. Without fail!

Click on the link in our bio for the recipe I submitted to ! What are some of your family’s favorite recipes or food traditions?

Can you spot the queen cells?? 👑

We lost a few of our hives over the winter, so to replenish, Winslow split the surviving stronger hives last week. This means that the new “split” hives are well on their way to being able to sustain themselves and increase their 🐝 numbers!

So very grateful for these three sillies for making me a mama and keeping me on my toes! I have learned so much about myself since becoming a mama - my strengths, weaknesses, adaptability, resilience, and endless capacity to love. My heart, body, and life will never be the same as they were before these beauties came into the world, and I wouldn’t change a thing. My heart is so full today and everyday 💕

For those of you for whom Mother’s Day is complicated or difficult, I see you, and I am holding you in my heart 💜

It’s been awhile since we’ve been active on social media, but after taking the winter to rest and nest, the beginning of spring feels like an auspicious time to resurface and make an introduction! 👶🏻

Meet farm baby #3, Anno, who joined us last month! Big sisters Finley and Thea are (mostly) thrilled, and we are all dreaming about the adventures we’ll have together as a family.

Winslow and I are fully outnumbered now with 3 kids 4 and under, but it’s a happy (and exhausting) chaos 🙃

Extra bacon grease?

We usually save ours in the fridge to use for cooking, but it’s also great to use for homemade bird feeders!

Yesterday we collected some big pinecones and let them open up by the fire.

After breakfast this morning, we mixed birdseed into the liquid grease, spooned it into the pinecones, and let them harden on waxed paper.

Next, we’ll tie some string around them and hang them in the trees for the birds!

What’s it like farming with littles?

An hour and a half of getting everyone dressed and ready to go outside. 🧤

Fifteen minutes loading everyone into the truck (don’t forget the water bottles!). 🛻

Ten minutes of unloading everyone and everything (did you forget the water bottles?). 👨‍👩‍👧‍👧

Twenty five minutes of productive(ish) farming before full on meltdowns (forgot the snacks). 🫠

BUT, we unloaded 20 bales of straw and tucked in four rows of garlic…pretty good for a Sunday morning! 🧄

Staying true to form, we’re cutting it pretty close with the garlic planting, but today was a gorgeous day to get to it (well, half of it anyways).

And of course, it’s Halloween, so swipe for some Moana costume magic!

Feeling infinitely grateful to be able to hold our little family close today.

Our hearts are breaking for all those who cannot hold theirs. 💔

On this Indigenous Peoples’ Day, we recognize that this beloved land that nourishes our family’s bodies and souls was stolen from the Wabanaki people.

We are grateful for this day to renew our promise to steward this land as best we can, for as long as we can. As part of our journey, we will be making a financial donation to .alliance to support their work in educating on the importance of sovereignty for the Wabanaki nations.