Página InicialGruposDiscussãoMaisZeitgeist
Pesquisar O Sítio Web
Este sítio web usa «cookies» para fornecer os seus serviços, para melhorar o desempenho, para analítica e (se não estiver autenticado) para publicidade. Ao usar o LibraryThing está a reconhecer que leu e compreende os nossos Termos de Serviço e Política de Privacidade. A sua utilização deste sítio e serviços está sujeita a essas políticas e termos.

Resultados dos Livros Google

Carregue numa fotografia para ir para os Livros Google.

A carregar...

The Growing Season: How I Saved an American Farm--and Built a New Life

por Sarah Frey

MembrosCríticasPopularidadeAvaliação médiaMenções
506509,400 (3.6)4
"One woman's tenacious journey to escape poverty and create a billion-dollar farming business--without ever leaving the land she loved. 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. She spent much of her early childhood dreaming of running away to Hollywood, Chicago--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, and, at seventeen, took over the farm and started her own produce company there. Refusing to play by traditional rules, Sarah talked her way into suit-filled boardrooms, made deals with the nation's largest retailers, and became so legendary that the Harvard Business School published a case study on her negotiation skills. Today, Sarah's family-operated company, Frey Farms, has sold more than a billion dollars' worth of fresh produce, beverages, and consumer packaged goods, and has become one of America's largest fresh produce suppliers, with farmland spread across seven states. Thanks to the millions of melons and pumpkins she sells annually, Sarah has been dubbed "America's Pumpkin Queen" by the national press. The Growing Season tells the inspiring story of how a scrappy rural childhood gave Sarah the grit and resiliency to take risks that paid off in unexpected ways. Rather than leaving her 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"--… (mais)
Nenhum(a)
A carregar...

Adira ao LibraryThing para descobrir se irá gostar deste livro.

Ainda não há conversas na Discussão sobre este livro.

» Ver também 4 menções

Mostrando 1-5 de 6 (seguinte | mostrar todos)
Maybe not quite 4 stars....
I liked the anecdotes Frey tells, so the first half of the book is more interesting than the last half. In the first half, she is describing her family, her setting, growing up in southern IL with a dysfunctional family, her struggles to free herself from that environment. (Lots of echoes of Educated) Once she makes the decision to buyout her father and the family farm, the business seems to grow rapidly and some of the narrative becomes tedious. Really not interested in hearing how other people found her story inspiring...when I'm still reading the story. The anecdotes get more sparse and shallow in the second half of the book as well. My father still owns some of the farm where he grew up (in central IL), and there were times reading Frey's story that I was wishing I had the nerve to do what she had done, so her story is somewhat inspiring.
But then there were times when I was counting the pages until it was done. (I would like to buy some of her produce though....) ( )
  Jeff.Rosendahl | May 2, 2022 |
As many other reviewers have noted, this memoir will remind you of "Educated," minus the religious cult and abusive childhood. Her parents were hands-off, she grew up poor, and she did many dangerous things at a young age: drove a truck at age eight, hunted and fished at age six, learned to swim by her brothers throwing her in a lake at age 5.

Sarah Frey is the youngest in her family, and vowed to leave her family's struggling Southern Illinois farm as soon as she could. Instead, at fifteen, she begins her own fresh produce delivery business. She soon buys the farm from her incompetent father, and her successful business journey continues from there.

With an amazingly positive attitude, courage, and fearless strength of will, Sarah builds a billion-dollar farming business. This first-person account describes how she did it, what was sacrificed, and where she is today.

Only 3 stars because everything kept working out for Sarah in what became an unrealistic litany of achievement. I wanted more emotion and honesty to balance the relentless pursuit of success. ( )
  PhyllisReads | Dec 19, 2020 |
Sarah Frey is a phenom who started her business at age 15 with a "melon route," selling her and other local farms' melons to retail stores. Now she heads a multi-million dollar corporation, wholesaling local produce with an emphasis on melons and pumpkins. If you've bought a pumpkin not grown locally to you, from a big-box store, it's probably from Frey Farms (and she thanks you).

The story has a bit of that vibe of, "OMG can you believe my awful childhood, how did I survive!" The Frey kids are numerous and grow up in poverty. (There were five them when Sarah was growing up; she bills herself as "the youngest of 21", but that counts the progeny of her parents' previous marriages before she was born.) But the siblings are loving, everyone gets through the hard times, and Sarah is making money hand over fist while still in her teens.

I share Sarah's love of pumpkins - I agree, they just make people happy, and we should try to use them more than once a year for carving. I love memoirs, farm memoirs, and memoirs of how people became successful. But I had some issues. I get the melon route at age 15, for one thing; I get a lot of the precociousness. But I DON'T get how she secured a $10,000 car loan at that age. Come on.

And it may say something negative about me, but I couldn't get over Sarah's model-perfect, angular and perky face peeking out at me from the inside author shot, or the scenically posed picture of her with a busload of pumpkins on the cover. Or her hoisting that watermelon with her perfectly coiffed blonde hair, spotless white t-shirt, and cute tight faded jeans on the back cover. There's a shot of the author as a young girl with one of her brothers, sitting on top of a ram. That's adorable. This is a memoir of your childhood - we want childhood photos! We KNOW you're gorgeous now; one vanity shot would suffice. ( )
  Tytania | Dec 5, 2020 |
The subtitle is all the synopsis you need: How I built a New Life – and Saved an American Farm.

Frey’s memoir begins with her childhood on the family farm in southern Illinois. The youngest of her father’s and mother’s combined 21 children, she was far from the pampered “baby” of the family. Yes, her four older brothers doted on her and protected her, but they also challenged her to go hunting and fishing with them, and to do the heavy chores required to keep the family’s farm running. Still, her father’s con-man mentality and “big dreams” kept the family in precarious financial shape. Like her older brothers, Frey could hardly wait to escape “the Hill” and lead a normal life.

But when she was walking the last horse off the property and facing a foreclosure auction, she found she just couldn’t let the land go. So, she decided she would buy the farm and make it into a viable business. Today Frey Farms is a thriving multi-million dollar a year agribusiness. And some of the deals she has negotiated have become case studies used by the Harvard Business School.

In many ways, this reminded me of Tara Westover’s Educated. But where Westover’s father and brothers were abusive, Frey was surrounded by love and support. Frey’s parents valued education and insisted that all their children attend school AND do well in their studies. Her upbringing gave her confidence in her ability to do anything if she put her mind to it and put in the work. She also was a keen observer and determined not to make the mistakes her father made.

I found her story interesting but somewhat repetitive. Still, on my next trip to the grocery store, I’ll be checking the pumpkins and melons to see if they have the Frey Farms sticker! ( )
  BookConcierge | Sep 24, 2020 |
While this is similar to Heartland and Educated, where it differs is that Sarah Frey created an organization that brought jobs to her community and her family together. She told the story of her family growing up and the tough lessons her father taught her and her brothers. Those lessons made Sarah tough to begin earning her own way starting at 15. She went to high school, worked, and took college classes at night. She started her business small picking up the melon routes from her mother then growing her business. She learned by trial and error but she learned well. She also learned to stay out of debt which ruins many a small farmer. I loved how she showed the bankers who doubted her but she grew her reputation and brand. She is an inspiration on how she managed her life and business and how she increased her business by buying small farms and using them as farms for her business. Very well written book. Very easy to read. I could identify with her. ( )
  Sheila1957 | Aug 27, 2020 |
Mostrando 1-5 de 6 (seguinte | mostrar todos)
sem críticas | adicionar uma crítica
Tem de autenticar-se para poder editar dados do Conhecimento Comum.
Para mais ajuda veja a página de ajuda do Conhecimento Comum.
Título canónico
Título original
Títulos alternativos
Data da publicação original
Pessoas/Personagens
Locais importantes
Acontecimentos importantes
Filmes relacionados
Epígrafe
Dedicatória
Primeiras palavras
Citações
Últimas palavras
Nota de desambiguação
Editores da Editora
Autores de citações elogiosas (normalmente na contracapa do livro)
Língua original
DDC/MDS canónico
LCC Canónico

Referências a esta obra em recursos externos.

Wikipédia em inglês

Nenhum(a)

"One woman's tenacious journey to escape poverty and create a billion-dollar farming business--without ever leaving the land she loved. 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. She spent much of her early childhood dreaming of running away to Hollywood, Chicago--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, and, at seventeen, took over the farm and started her own produce company there. Refusing to play by traditional rules, Sarah talked her way into suit-filled boardrooms, made deals with the nation's largest retailers, and became so legendary that the Harvard Business School published a case study on her negotiation skills. Today, Sarah's family-operated company, Frey Farms, has sold more than a billion dollars' worth of fresh produce, beverages, and consumer packaged goods, and has become one of America's largest fresh produce suppliers, with farmland spread across seven states. Thanks to the millions of melons and pumpkins she sells annually, Sarah has been dubbed "America's Pumpkin Queen" by the national press. The Growing Season tells the inspiring story of how a scrappy rural childhood gave Sarah the grit and resiliency to take risks that paid off in unexpected ways. Rather than leaving her 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"--

Não foram encontradas descrições de bibliotecas.

Descrição do livro
Resumo Haiku

Current Discussions

Nenhum(a)

Capas populares

Ligações Rápidas

Avaliação

Média: (3.6)
0.5
1
1.5
2
2.5
3 4
3.5 2
4 3
4.5
5 1

É você?

Torne-se num Autor LibraryThing.

 

Acerca | Contacto | LibraryThing.com | Privacidade/Termos | Ajuda/Perguntas Frequentes | Blogue | Loja | APIs | TinyCat | Bibliotecas Legadas | Primeiros Críticos | Conhecimento Comum | 203,229,875 livros! | Barra de topo: Sempre visível