Social - September 2003

Pepper People

Couple prunes, pampers purple pepper plants

By ALICE SMITH, Staff Writer

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VALE — Fourteen years ago, Merle McNeely noticed a unique plant at a flea market in Florida.

Miniature peppers — purple, red, yellow and orange — grew from the tiny plant. It cost about a buck.

She wanted to buy it, but her husband, William, who goes by Dub, advised against it.

“I said you can’t buy any more plants because we ain’t got nowhere to put them,” he says with a laugh.

Merle didn’t listen.

She brought the purple pepper plant back to their rural western Lincoln County home, and it literally grew from there.

The original plant is now about four feet tall, covered in peppers and purple blossoms.

“It looks like a Christmas tree,” Dub says.

But that was just the beginning. Not happy with one pepper plant, Merle started potting.

“I’ve got a green thumb, I guess you’d call it,” she says. “Everything I get my hands on, I root it.”

She and Dub begin in April, taking seeds from the peppers and planting them in a flat.

They then transplant them to a cell. When the seedlings are about four inches tall, they put them in pots — lots of pots.

This year, they potted till the pots ran out. Some neighbors donated extras.

That 14-year-old plant produced about 75 others this year.

Merle and Dub packed up the batch of plants in their old pick-up truck and shuttled them to the Apple Festival.

They took them last year and sold out, and this year’s festival was no different.

Those who got to the McNeelys’ booth quick enough handed over $4 or $5 and got a colorful pepper plant in return. Some carried it through the streets of Lincolnton like a prize; others slipped a small piece of paper with their name into the plant’s pot and left it sitting in the shade of the McNeelys’ truck.

Merle and Dub never expected to peak such an interest.

“We were surprised,” Merle says. “A lot of them wanted our phone number.”

By 10:20 Saturday they’d sold almost all of the plants.

A purple pepper plant sale is never quick. Buyers have question after question about care and consumption.

Merle effortlessly rattles off instructions: bring it in during the winter, water it almost daily and be careful before popping them in your mouth.

When the peppers turn red, they can be used for eating. But Merle says they’re best when making a hot pepper vinegar.

“One man pulled one off and said, ‘Is it hot?’ and I said ‘You better believe it,’” Merle says. “He said it burned him all the way home.”

The plants take a lot of watering and a lot of attention, Merle says.

Pepper plants Merle and Dub couldn’t fit in the truck to bring to the festival sit in the grass of their shady yard.

A table on the porch offers okra and ripe tomatoes, small and large. Various flowers and plants decorate the area across their driveway.

Some empty pots are strewn about, along with watering cans and other tools.

They’ve been farming forever.

“All but 32 months when I was in the service,” Dub says.

Staying outside and active is the key to their livelihood.

Tuesday, sitting near their porch in the cool of the afternoon, Dub and Merle play with their dogs, Angel and Trouble.

A sign hanging near the tomatoes and okra reads “I’m in the field. Self-serve.”

A car pulls in to the driveway, the woman inside on the search for good tomatoes.

“We stay busy, but that’s all that keeps me going,” Dub says.

© 2001 Lincoln Times-News  

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