SARAH FEY’S INSPIRING MEMOIR- RAGS TO RICHES
About THE GROWING SEASON:
The youngest of her parents’ combined twenty-one children, Sarah Frey grew up on a struggling farm in southern Illinois, often having to grow, catch, or hunt her own dinner alongside her brothers. She spent much of her early childhood dreaming of running away to the big city--or really anywhere with central heating. At fifteen, she moved out of her family home and started her own fresh produce delivery business with nothing more than an old pickup truck. Two years later, when the family farm faced inevitable foreclosure, Sarah gave up on her dreams of escape, took over the farm and created her own produce company.
Sarah’s difficult childhood experiences would ultimately be the inspiration for her refusal to play by traditional rules of any kind. She began talking her way into suit-filled boardrooms at seventeen, made deals with the nation’s largest retailers, and fostered legendary negotiations that led Harvard Business School to publish one of their most popular negotiation case studies. Filled with grit and grace, THE GROWING SEASON: How I Built a New Life—and Saved an American Farm (Ballantine, On Sale: August 25, 2020) tells the inspiring story of how a scrappy rural childhood gave Sarah the resiliency to take risks that paid off in unexpected ways.
Today, Sarah’s family-operated company, Frey Farms, has sold more than a billion dollars’ worth of fresh produce and beverages, and has become one of America’s largest fresh produce growers and suppliers, with farmland spread across seven states. Inspired by Sarah’s upbringing Frey Farms finds a greater purpose for everything grown resulting in the manufacturing of natural food products and beverages made from imperfect or “ugly fruit”. Thanks to the millions of melons and pumpkins she sells annually, Sarah has been dubbed “America’s Pumpkin Queen” by the national press. Rather than leaving her rural community, Sarah found adventure and opportunity in one of the most forgotten parts of our country. With fearlessness and creativity, she literally dug her destiny out of the dirt.
Praise for THE GROWING SEASON
“Although The Growing Season . . . is a gutsy success story, it’s never over the top. Frey relates everything in the same matter-of-fact tone, even when she’s describing something that doesn’t reflect well on her. . . . It would have been so easy for Frey to sand off the rough edges, to buff this story into something shiny and sparkly. She refused—and I admire her for that.” —The New York Times Book Review
“Similar to Tara Westover’s Educated, this part memoir, part entrepreneurial story, tells of one woman’s success in business based on relationships of mutual trust with other farmers, accompanied by her sheer hard work. . . . The author also adds some of her thoughts on what it’s like to be a modern farmer, which are sometimes hilarious and often endearing. She has the inimitable quality of appearing not as someone who accomplished so much at such a young age but rather a person readers will enjoy getting to know, chapter by chapter. Frey brings a breath of fresh air to both the personal memoir genre and the business world. Her writing is crisp and her personality winning. A must-read.” —Library Journal (Starred Review)
“Frey’s energetic, inspiring memoir will appeal to small business owners and anyone who likes a bootstrapping success story.” —Publishers Weekly
“With earnest, effective storytelling, Frey demonstrates her character: “impatient, driven, restless, and at time obsessive”—and highly successful. A heart-gladdening memoir of a rare triumph over poverty.” —Kirkus