You could say that sweetpotatoes are in Amberly Ralls’s blood.
Her father, Nathan Mininger, has been farming sweetpotatoes for 35 years, right here in California.
“The old roads in the Central Valley remind me of Saturdays as a child, sitting next to my dad on his truck while he checked his fields. The summer sun reminds me of time spent on harvesters, wanting to be just like my dad.”
Today, Amberly is still hanging out with dad and his sweetpotatoes, in charge of marketing and social media at Mininger Foods. Mininger is unique compared to most of our members—they grow sweetpotatoes as Mininger Farms, selling some of what they harvest whole, and they process the rest as Mininger Foods. “We wash and cut the sweetpotatoes in countless ways and sell the majority of that product to meal prep companies,” says Amberly. So if you’ve bought a meal kit that contained sweetpotatoes, you might’ve enjoyed one from Mininger.
Also part of the operation are cousin Nolan Mininger, head foreman of farming, and brother-in-law Eric, plant manager. Amberly’s brother Jason Tucker also farms sweetpotatoes as Tucker Produce. Clearly, Amberly’s not the only one with sweetpotatoes in her blood.
When she’s not working, Amberly is busy driving kids to school and sports and working with women as a certified life coach. “Our house is always full of laughter and noise. We all enjoy cooking and conversations around the dinner table.”
“We absolutely love what we do,” Amberly says of Mininger Foods. “Feeding families health and nutrition from sweetpotatoes is an honor.”
And those old roads she spent countless hours on with her dad? Last year, she built her forever home on one of them. “I can remember as a kid, friends talking about leaving Central California,” Amberly says. “But I knew this was the place for me.”
