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2 Obras 51 Miembros 6 Reseñas

Obras de Sarah Frey

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Conocimiento común

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Miembros

Reseñas

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....)
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Denunciada
Jeff.Rosendahl | 5 reseñas más. | 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.
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Denunciada
PhyllisReads | 5 reseñas más. | 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.
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Denunciada
Tytania | 5 reseñas más. | 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!
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Denunciada
BookConcierge | 5 reseñas más. | Sep 24, 2020 |

Estadísticas

Obras
2
Miembros
51
Popularidad
#311,767
Valoración
½ 3.6
Reseñas
6
ISBNs
5

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