Sarah Frey

Her second book, The Growing Season (2020), was reviewed by Publishers Weekly and the Boston Globe, The New York Times, Kirkus Reviews and The Library Journal.

In 2019, Frey was recruited by congressional Republicans looking for a female candidate to replace Republican Representative John Shimkus after he announced his retirement but decided not to run.

Frey has been described as "the Pumpkin Queen of America". She grows more pumpkins than any other farmer in the United States. In 2016, Frey sold around five million pumpkins. Most of her pumpkin crop is not suitable for eating, but is very popular for Halloween lantern carving. The family business now owns about 15,000 acres (6,100 ha) of farms, spanning Florida, Georgia, Missouri, Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, and West Virginia. Although pumpkins are the most popular produce, the business also farms watermelons, cantaloupes, sweet corn, and hard squash. In 2018, Frey Farms launched Sarah’s Homegrown. Sarah’s Homegrown is focused on agua frescas and fresh produce. Frey Farms is a Certified Women Owned Business.

Her parents' financial situation had become dire. Her parents, who had falsely presented themselves as married for thirty years, were separating. The farm was being foreclosed on. In her youth, Frey had wanted to follow her brothers off the farm and move to a city, but following the threat of the farm's repossession, she decided to help save it. She purchased the farm outright at age 18. At the time it was in two parcels, the original 80 acres and another parcel of 20. She decided to use the land to grow pumpkins, a fall crop that would be ready for harvest after the melon season ended and thereby extend her earnings period. She worked at the local Walmart distribution center business in 1997, while still in high school.

Sarah Frey (born July 24, 1976) is an American farmer and entrepreneur. She is the CEO and owner of Frey Farms, which she founded at age sixteen. Frey Farms is the largest H-2A visa employer in Illinois as well as the largest grower of pumpkins in the United States.

Frey was born July 24, 1976, to Harold and Elizabeth Frey. Both had been previously married. Her father was a steelworker and a farmer and for a time part owner of the Dixie Feed franchise in St. Louis, but her parents fled to Tennessee to escape what Frey calls "a perfect storm" of bad decision-making by her father, who staged an accident to make it look as if he'd died. The couple's first child, a girl, was killed as a toddler in a farm accident; the couple left Tennessee for Illinois shortly thereafter. Frey has four older full brothers, thirteen half-siblings from her father's first marriage, and two from her mother's first marriage; counting her half siblings she is the youngest of 21.