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

The Growing Season: How I Saved an American Farm--And Built a New Life by Sarah Frey
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

My Dad grew up in small town Southern Illinois, but moved North for work (and love) after high school. We often vacationed to visit relatives in the South, and his hometown was often a topic of conversation. About when I was in college I noticed that my family knew a number of people that had become famous for different things from the area in the South. There was a few business founders, some politicians that held or ran for state office, an NBA hall of famer, and famous-at-the-time authors. So I am not surprised when someone from small town Southern Illinois makes something of themselves. That’s what this book documents.

I found this book because it was chosen by the suburban Chicago paper as their reading club selection, and the discussion was led by our local community college. They advertised it in a mailing of their events. I attended the lecture and discussion online before I read the book and found the author intriguing. The quick summary of the book is that the author grows up “dirt poor” (meaning she was from a poor family and they talk about dirt a lot, being farmers) with a father that wants to teach her to stand on her own, and with a number of older brothers that got into a lot of trouble, mostly the good, clean kind. The author learns these lessons, starts a business buying and selling melons, attends local community college, and starts growing her business to include her brothers and to start raising melons and pumpkins in farms across the country. And she does this from her headquarters on a farm near a small town in Southern Illinois, about 10 miles from where my uncle’s family lived and about 20 miles from where my Dad grew up. There must be something in the water that makes a handful of folks stand out.

I liked the story overall. The anecdotes related to growing up and to making those first deals were interesting, and you can tell that that was how the author intended this book to be sold – as a story about a kid who starts from little and bootstraps herself into a big business. The book is not a denigration of her hometown. It's more Horatio Alger story than Hillbilly Elegy. I found this aspect interesting and worth reading. The author comes across with a personality a lot like, say, Dolly Parton, but with watermelon trading instead of music driving her forward.

I also tend to read a lot of business books, and given that this was about a business I was hoping for some details about her business. You don’t really get any indication of how her business relates to her competition, if her company always battles big food wholesalers, how big the company even is. There is also a mention of Frey’s negotiating skills in the book blurb, saying that she is such a good negotiator that Harvard made a case study out of her skills. You would assume this would be a main topic in this book. What she says is that she happened to drive past a new Walmart warehouse/office the day it opened and stopped by to introduce herself to a buyer, who happened to be there. That is the episode that she says led to the Harvard case study. I have to wonder if Harvard made a mistake, or if Frey is being coy. If this book was intended to be a business book, you would have had this question answered, and there would have been a reference to the case study. There is none here. This is a personal narrative that happens to involve a business. I'd give it an A as a personal narrative, and a C+ as a business book. This book opens a lot of opportunities for the author (politics? business celebrity? food celebrity?). I expect to see her again.


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