 Hi everybody, I'm Andy Beam, I'm Executive Director at Maine Audubon and it's June. It's that wonderful time of year where everybody knows to make their way to Gilson Farm and check out the beautiful peonies that we have there. And with us today, we have a couple of wonderful people, Elizabeth and Susan Spiller, who are family members of the Molten family who donated that property to Maine Audubon. Betsy, for people who perhaps are maybe not familiar with the history of the farm and how it came to be, an incredible gift to Maine Audubon, would you maybe tell us a little bit about that? My grandfather, David Edward Molten, who was born in 1871 and lived 80 years, was a man of many interests and talents, he's a carpenter, very successful Portland lawyer, a horticulturist and also a public servant. He grew up in a very small family name. When David was in high school, he and his older brother started a company and made cold cream, which all the ladies loved, and they earned money selling the cold cream and they earned enough money to send both of them to Bowdoin, I mean, and later they did sell the company off and he went to Yale Law School and started a practice in Portland and from there, and they lived there over 40 years in the winter time, that was their home, and after that he got married and had two daughters, my mother and Ruth and her sister Louise, and at 10 years, my mother was eight, I guess, 10 years after he was married, his wife died, and at that time, shortly thereafter, in 1911, he bought 65 acres, he wanted to start a farm, which he did, and let's see, he had jersey cattle, 65 jersey cattle, lots of plants, so he was a horticulturist as well as a manager of a farm, but he called it Gilsam because his ancestors, way back when there were dates, 16 something, which I don't remember but anyway, he started, called it Gilsam Farm because his ancestor, Thomas Moulton, the fifth, was granted land in England and the land was in the Gils, G-I-L-S, and that's how we got the name, Gils Land was that kind of a place, and that's how we got the name. Betsy, you mentioned he was a horticulturist, and obviously one of the plants that Gilsam Farm is famous for are those incredible peonies, which are just starting to bloom now and look like they're going to be amazing this year, so he had a great love of the peonies, can you tell us a little bit about that history? Yes, I think his greatest love, according to him, was his peonies, and they were very famous, he imported them from Asia and Europe and they were so well known that he sold them to people here to $150, one single root, I mean, obviously they were very exquisite peonies. One of the most important things that I always heard a lot about was that he always gave red panties to all the graduating seniors from Portland High School, and people used to come back to the farm and say, oh, when I grew up, you know, because those people are a long gone now, but he was very famous for doing that, and he loved the community, he loved everything about the farm. He once told me, Betsy, that the peonies, as they are located now, the more old, that's not really where they all were back in the day, right? What happened was, he died in 1951, and his second wife sold off all the panties, all the roast, they came in and dug them up to some nursery, and they were gone, and 20 years or more later, they started coming up in the wild, because obviously they didn't dig up all the roots, I mean, they couldn't get all the roots, and now look at 70 years later how beautiful they are. I think it's absolutely amazing, and made Audubon move and made the formal beds out front of the building, which is so great, but that was from the wild, you figure from the wild stock of those panties, so how truly are, to the breed, it's hard to know. Clearly, they're very tenacious plants, and yeah, it's interesting, if you walk around, go some farm as you and I did last summer, you can find areas in the meadows where the peonies are interspersed with all of the wild native plants out there, and they're holding their own, they're a pretty strong strain, aren't they? Well, my parents brought back a lot of roots, I have still a very few, I think I have one white one here, and I had a red one earlier, about two weeks ago. Betsy, now as you're probably familiar, we do a native plants program at Maine Audubon, and Gilson Farm is also well known as a place where people can see us grow the plants, and can purchase them, and that ironically takes place about the same time that people are coming to see the peonies, but also a great aspect of people walking the trails at Gilson Farm are to be able to see the native plants, and all the wildlife, particularly the pollinators that are enjoying them, would you care to comment on that at all? I didn't know any ideas that you all have, maybe Susan has some being younger. Yeah, I think kind of thinking about vision, I would agree with everything my mother said, but I think also continuing to think about kind of the whole world and the environment which you're doing, and how do we help people, and in particular young people, to kind of understand the implications of their actions, which are people, you know, the global warming, and kind of improving what we do for the planet, and having this base to use kind of for that education of kind of everyone in the local area, and sharing that is really important, and I think absolutely fits with the vision that my grandparents, my mother's parents, had when they donated this land that belonged to her grandfather. What would you hope the legacy of your grandfather's property being donated to Maine Audubon is, as people enjoy this beautiful place, the Peony certainly, but even beyond that, when you think about that gift, that wonderful gift, what are you hoping that people think about? Well, I think my mother donated, my parents donated the property in memory of her father, David Moulton, and the fact that he was a wonderful steward and manager, and he was really a testimony to him, and he donated it to Maine Audubon, to the people of Falmouth, and all the people of Maine, really. And I just hope that you'll keep doing such a great job, I think you all are, and I know my mother would be very happy, and I thank you.