The ‘Soil Sisters’ are growing a future in their grandparents’ Pittsburgh neighborhood
“You might not have a green thumb, but you do have nine other fingers.”
By Dan Gigler
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Apr 22, 2013
Excerpt:
In the mildly musty basement of their 112-year-old Mount Oliver house, under banks of ultraviolet lights, Raynise and TaRay Kelly — aka the “Soil Sisters” — are growing the future: future plants, future food, and quite literally their own future.
Roughly 250 varieties of fruits, vegetables and herbs they’ve grown from seed are neatly arranged on industrial shelving. Paraphrasing the Souljah Boy song, TaRay says they have “racks on racks on racks” of everything from bok choy to heirloom tomatoes to mint growing big enough to eventually go into the ground.
It represents the seeds of the business they’re building, Soil Sisters Nursery, on the fertile ground of their family roots — an empty lot on Gearing Avenue a short distance away in Beltzhoover where their grandparents’ home once stood.
They gush with enthusiasm, and each talks a mile a minute about their passion and fascination for the process.
“It starts from our hand all the way to wherever it’s planted,” said Raynise, who lives in this house with TaRay. “They come in this little packet of nothing, and we see them start to sprout up and then the whole process of caring for them. We touch them, talk to them, sing to them. It’s a connection. The tiniest things ever are going to turn into food. I’m about to eat for weeks off of this?”