Robert is Here for Another Season

Under the Robert Is Here roof, outlined against the fast-fading pink-and-blue fall sunset, the only fruits in sight are a pile of green and orange papayas. It’s a few days until the iconic Homestead fruit stand is opening, and Robert Moehling and his family and staff are unloading boxes, coordinating deliveries, sprucing up and getting ready for another season.

“We get everything cleaned up and ready to go,” explains Brandon Moehling, one of Robert’s sons. This year, he says, there’s a new order system at the shake and smoothie counter, aimed at improving efficiency and alleviating the long lines. The family discovered some vintage fruit stand signs and turned them into campy t-shirts. Also new is a nursery, where visitors can buy trees and grow their own tropical fruits sold at the stand during the year, including various mango cultivars, avocado, sugar apple, caimito, lychee, mamey sapote, jaboticaba, jackfruit, sapodilla, dragonfruit and guava. There are more picnic tables. “Everything we do is to make things more enjoyable,”  says Brandon.

And then there’s the book.