Independent Women’s Forum is pleased to announce that Sarah Frey, founder and CEO of the Frey Company, a multimillion dollar agribusiness, is the latest in our popular series of Champion Women profiles.

Sarah Frey has an amazing story, which she tells in her book The Growing Season and in speaking with IWF. She lifted herself and family out of poverty by sheer grit, determination, and by always having hope.

“In the house where I grew up,” Sarah writes in her book, “everyone had secrets. Our biggest shared secret, one that we all worked hard to keep from everyone in the county, especially the authorities, was how brutally poor we were.”

When Sarah spent the night with a girl from school, she became fascinated with a novelty she had never before seen: a thermostat that regulated temperature. Sarah’s salvation was her mother’s melon delivery business, designed to bring in extra cash, but much, much more to Sarah.

“I really have my mother to credit for my success,” Frey tells IWF. “She started the fresh produce melon delivery route when I was a little girl. I was pretty small, seven or eight when I started going with her. Pretty soon, I was the one who went into the supermarket or grocery store to negotiate, while mom sat in the truck. If they wanted 25 melons, I always tried to up-sell them. Okay, are you sure you don’t want 30? We won’t be back for a couple of days, you know.”

Frey attributes her success—acquiring the farms that make up Frey Farms, the produce shipping business that services Walmart, Whole Foods, and other stores you know, the healthy drinks sold under the Sarah’s Homegrown label, and the pumpkin business that earned her the moniker of “the pumpkin queen”—to what she learned delivering melons in a truck with her mother.

We know you’ll enjoy meeting Sarah and learning about her adventures on the way to outstanding success and saving a family farm. Sarah’s saga is a great one to give to young people starting out and wondering what it takes to succeed.