[1] 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.

[1][3] Frey wrote in her memoir, The Growing Season, that "I never remember going to bed without eating anything, but sometimes our meals were just a bowl of mush.

Starting when I was four or five, whenever my parents took the truck into town and left me alone at the farm, I'd hop into their old two-door Mercury Grand Marquis.

[1][2] At 16, she borrowed $10,000 to buy a used truck and took over distribution of the melon route, quickly increasing the farm's client list from 12 to 150.

[1] 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.

[3][6] The family business now owns about 15,000 acres (6,100 ha) of farms, spanning Florida, Georgia, Missouri, Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, and West Virginia.

[8][9] Although pumpkins are the most popular produce, the business also farms watermelons, cantaloupes, sweet corn, and hard squash.

[14][13] Sarah Frey serves on the United Fresh Government Relations Council and the National Watermelon Promotion Board.

[22] The Boston Globe called her "a woman with a potent sense of self and an unmatched ability for inventing and selling herself in a business world often skeptical of or hostile to women, especially those without pedigree or connections.