Maine Cottage Keepers (MCK) is a small property management and vacation rental company. Pat & Shawn-Elise Lapomarda are both the property owners and operators of the business. We are local to the MidCoast and Sebago Lake Region areas, operating and living in both.

Back in 2013, we bought a cottage down the road from Shawn-Elise's dad, near where she grew up. It was a special place to her because as a child, it was her friend’s great aunt’s home and she visited there often. We both love the location and lived there full time for a short while. In 2016, we weren’t there as much as we wanted and still paid for it each month. So we decided to rent it out when we weren’t using it. We accelerated some projects we had been putting off. We did a thorough cleaning and took some new photos. Then we listed it and our first listing, Sea Rose Cottage, was born.

We bought this property as a 20th wedding anniversary gift to each other. We always block out time in the summer for ourselves. On the way back from dinner, we both made note of something that changed everything for us. We saw a group of people sitting out in front of a classic Maine farmhouse overlooking the ocean around a fire. The next morning, I received an alert that the house we had seen had was for sale. I created that alert when we were looking for another cottage we own in Owls Head. We called our real estate broker and asked if to see it the next day, on our 20th wedding anniversary. We blown away by the possibilities it offered and decided to buy it.

A little more than a month later, we closed on that farmhouse. We started renting the three season cottage ourselves as Bella’s Bungalow. The former owner’s bed & breakfast name: Pointed Fir B&B. inspired the name Salt and Fir Farmhouse. The old barn had a family room downstairs and the old hayloft was an enclosed studio. That fall, we tore the roof off the barn and added a full length dormer to it. Over the winter, it became the Loft at Salt and Fir.