Young Fashion Model Couple Are Now New York City Urban Farmers
Babajide Alao and Pesy Sikyala met while working as models during New York Fashion Week in 2014. Nearly eight years later, the young couple has shifted their focus from fashion to food and farming. Their urban farm is shown at minute 6:30.
They achieved their dream of serving fresh and authentic West African food to locals in their beloved New York City beach community.
By Inside Edition Staff
January 22, 2022
Excerpt:
The farm has given Alao and Sikyala an opportunity to provide their restaurant with farm-to-table produce – making The Cradle the only such African restaurant in New York City – which has long been vital to their long-term vision. “The main goal of the restaurant is to be 100% farm-to-table. We are working on that every single day and also learning from every process because life is a learning process and is a learning curve at every turn,” Alao said. “Knowing where my food comes from is really important [to me]. Similar to living back at home in Nigeria, we had a small garden in the backyard. It was so normal until I came to the United States and started living in the apartment building and not having access to farms or being able to grow our own food. Farm-to-table really brings me closer to home and closer to how my grandparents did it in Nigeria.”
The implications of the wider community’s lack of access to fresh food isn’t lost on Sikyala, who is using the farm as a point of education, too. “Driving [through a] Black community there’s a high chance you’ll run into a lot of fast food establishments,” she pointed out. “Most of [them] have never been to a farm before or know where their foods are coming from.”
With that ethos driving her, Sikyala created The Cradle’s Farming 101 program, which is designed to give local children and their families hands-on opportunities to learn the ins and outs of growing, harvesting and composting. “In Africa, we grew up growing our own fruits and vegetables,” she explained. “That alone is just an important aspect of the value of life.”
