Ernestine Sleeper likes to get her hands dirty.

“I love the dirt,” said the 100-year-old vegetable and flower grower from Mechanic Falls. “I love to get my hands in it.”

Sleeper retired from working in shoe shops when she was 65, and to supplement her retirement income she turned her passion into a little profit. She converted her henhouse into a greenhouse to raise tomatoes, peppers and flowers.  

Her Yankee ingenuity and “make do” attitude help keep costs down, her daughter-in-law Mary Sleeper said.

“I tell my customers each year that this is my last,” the great-great-grandmother said. Most who stop by are the regulars who have been coming for years, she said. Her two greenhouses are only open during the month of May or until her last tomato plant is sold.

Skip Sleeper said he remembers many cold nights when his mother would stay up all hours feeding wood into the greenhouse wood stove so her plants would not freeze.

Ernestine has lived in the same home for 75 years and drove a car until she turned 98.  

She is the oldest of four children and the only one of them still living. She attributes her good health to spending time at the ocean. She was born in Boothbay Harbor and still tends to her camp on the coast nearby.

“I eat more when I go to camp and I feel a lot better too,” she said.

She has three children, nine grandchildren, 22 great-grandchildren and 20 great-great-grandchildren. Her husband, Ralph, a World War I veteran, died in 1974.

Ernestine said she is already planning to sell marigolds and hand out free tomato plants to children again next spring, “as long as I am able. I love to get the seeds going” in April.”