It is likely that Sarah Frey has never sighed and thought, “Oh well, that’s just the way it is.”
Pessimism is not in her DNA. Instead, “What if?” and “How could we?” are her predominant trains of thought, and they have taken her to success as an entrepreneur, speaker, author, innovator and advocate for both agriculture and rural America.
She says optimism came naturally, growing up on 80 acres in rural Wayne County, but her journey hasn’t necessarily been easy.
Always moving
Even at age 8, a time when many girls’ worlds revolve around pretend, play and friends, Frey was knee-deep in public relations, sales and hard work. Every summer, she would accompany her mother on a produce route, selling melons to a dozen grocery stores, one at a time, in their part of southern Illinois.
“We’d drive to southern Indiana to buy melons to sell to the grocery stores on our route,” she remembers. “My mom would send me into the grocery store, and it was hot outside, so we didn’t have a lot of time to spend at any one location — the sun was beating down on those melons.
“She would drop me off in the front, I would go in, talk to the produce manager, find out how many melons he needed that day, grab a shopping cart and meet my mom in the back of the store where we would unload the melons. I’d put the cart back, collect the money and jump in the truck as she was pulling away. Then, we’d go on to the next store and do it all over again.”
By the time she was a teenager, her “What if?” thinking was ripe with possibilities. At 15, she was attending high school and college at the same time. To make ends meet, she took over the produce route, growing it from the dozen stores she and her mother had been servicing to well over 100 retailers. It was all with a goal to move on.
“Everything I was doing, I was doing with focus in an effort to leave home and never return,” she says.
Then at age 16, as her family’s farm was facing foreclosure, more “How could we?” thinking came into play, and it led her to change her plans. “I knew I had to stay,” Frey recalls. “I decided, ‘I’m going to create a life that my family is going to want to come back to.’” She bought the farm and began to find a way to make it work.
“The moment when I decided to buy the farm, I believed that forces greater than myself were making me stay. I saw my future playing out in front of my eyes, and it felt like a life of sacrifice. Now I see how staying has given me great gifts,” she says. “That was the moment when everything changed.”
Right time, right place, right produce
As she continued to expand the produce route — one truck, then a truck and trailer, followed by an even larger truck — she made a connection that she sees as a turning point. After one delivery, she talked with the produce buyer at the brand-new Walmart distribution center near Olney. She already had been supplying melons to some of the retail giant’s stores that the new facility would be servicing.
“I asked if they would be accepting deliveries there,” Frey says. “She said, ‘Yes, and I’m so glad you stopped by. I’m going to need three semi loads of watermelons every week and two loads of cantaloupes. Can you just take care of that for us?’” Her answer? An enthusiastic, “Of course!”
“That really set us up to be able to grow the operation and then, ultimately, set us toward regional and national business.” The gravity of that agreement — one made by a 19-year-old with a produce truck — and the trajectory of success that would follow is not lost on Frey.
“When people say to me that I negotiated with Walmart when I was so young, I know that I actually had years of experience which had already prepared me for that — all of the things that I had done and been through, and the grit of being raised on the farm without a lot of the modern luxuries. There were many things that came together from my past that prepared me for that moment,” she says.
Back on the farm
Turning the home farm into a success took more “How could we?” thinking. Knowing that less-than-ideal soil was one of the factors in the farm’s original struggles, she looked for an alternative to row crop agriculture. She didn’t have to look far, leaning on her experience with produce, and decided to give pumpkins a shot. Just like the ever-growing produce route, it worked.
Diversifying with homegrown produce and distribution, Frey has fulfilled her vision — one by one, her four brothers have returned to the farm to help run the business, which now consists of farms (totaling more than 12,000 acres of production) and facilities in seven states, along with more than three dozen distribution partners across the country, with some of Frey Farms located on Wayne-White Counties Electric Cooperative lines. Over the years, she has led through hard work and innovation.
As the farm continued to grow, so did its transportation needs. Moving hundreds of melons and other products from field to processor looked like an expensive process — until she realized it was possible to cut the roofs off discarded school buses — perfect farm transportation vehicles.
“We basically got a $50,000 piece of equipment for $2,500,” she says. “Now, almost 30 years later, we use hundreds of buses to harvest our crops all across the country.”
She also developed Tsamma Watermelon Juice, discovering a way to use fruit that often is tilled under at the end of the season. The brand has undergone rapid national retail expansion — it was the first watermelon juice to be distributed across the country — and millions of dollars in revenue are reported annually for this single product alone.
Tsamma is just one product from Frey Farms. The company, which also produces cantaloupes, squash, sweet corn, peanuts, pumpkins, ornamentals and watermelons, holds the distinction of being the nation’s largest pumpkin producer, but actually grows more watermelons than pumpkins.
Frey Farms also makes Sarah’s Homegrown agua frescas in a variety of flavors, and a new product, Sarah’s Homegrown Pumpkin Pie Mix, will be available this fall at Aldi stores.
A focus on rural communities
Frey, now 50, says she wants to continue to grow the Keenes, Ill.-based enterprise and the rural areas like it where the company works. “I have a passion and an appreciation for rural communities as we continue to expand our business, and we want to do that in communities that don’t look much different than the one I grew up in,” she says. “I get a lot of satisfaction when we are able to create jobs and opportunities for people in rural areas.”
Her own accomplishments have gained her national attention and accolades. She was suggested as a possible nominee for Secretary of Agriculture, and she’s been appointed by both Democratic and Republican administrations to boards, councils and commissions. Frey has also been named one of the most influential women in American agriculture.
“It is an honor to be considered for anything or to be mentioned as a worthy candidate for a possible position, but at the end of the day, I’m committed to running my business and doing the work that I have set out to do,” she explains.
She shares her recipe for the work she has set out to do in her book, “The Growing Season,” writing that, “I know I can do this, but if I’m going to do it, I have to do it my way, and I can’t keep doing the same thing.”
It’s something she believes others can do, as well. “I think that everyone has it in themselves to be successful,” she urges. “It’s just looking at things differently and challenging the status quo. It’s the willingness to change, to be open to opportunities and to be willing to think about things differently. For me, it was just literally a decision and then a lot of hard work.”
She continues, “I believe, regardless of circumstances, success is still attainable. It takes being uncomfortable, but if you are willing to accept change and change yourself, the American dream is still alive and well.”
