When Sara Barbour (Laguna Blanca School ’07, Columbia University ’11) left Carpinteria to attend college in New York City, it seemed that her future would be an urban one. A gifted writer, outstanding student, and key link in an unusually close-knit group of Laguna Owls, Sara relished the opportunity to experience both top-flight academic challenges at Columbia and big-city culture in the Big Apple. Four years later, having excelled in her History and English double major and risen to the top of the publishing world with a full-time job at O, Oprah Winfrey’s magazine, Sara would seem to have secured that most elusive of contemporary goals, the high-profile first job.
Yet it was her close friend and boss at O who introduced her to Cynthia Sandberg and David Kinch, the proprietors of Love Apple Farms in Santa Cruz and Manresa restaurant in Los Gatos, and within a month of graduation, Sara had left the city for the farm. Soon after that, Sara established her own publication on the web, the wonderfully well written and thoughtful food blog girlfarmkitchen.com. The students currently enrolled in AP English Language and Composition at Laguna Blanca were so inspired by Sara’s writing (and her delicious recipe for bran pancakes) that they started their own AP food blog at apfoodblog.wordpress.com.
Sara emailed recently to fill us all in on how she became a part of the growing movement towards more conscious and healthful eating, and about how her education at Laguna Blanca and then Columbia University inspired her to become a writer.