14 May - Schnebly Winery, Robert is Here Fruit Stand and Farm

 

Today was a bit more relaxed.  We explored the local area a bit and then stopped at a local winery. Schnebly Redlands Winery & Brewery, located on the outskirts of Homestead FL and supposedly "the southernmost winery in the United States" is noted for their exotic tropical fruit wines.  Their winery has a beautiful garden area with a waterfall and tables, to enjoy your wine or have lunch.  They host weddings and other special events there as well.  

Unfortunately we were about 30 minutes too early for the wine tasting, and the garden area was closed, but the sales area was at least open. The young man there allowed us to sample a couple wines and we bought a couple bottles along with their souvenir wine glasses. One of the wines Doreen picked out was "the first wine made with avocados"!  It does not sound appetizing but it was really good!  Another is called Denisse’s Boo-Boo Reserve and was apparently made by mistake! What the heck. We will give it a go!

We had a short drive to our next stop and on the way we had a large bird run across the road a ways in front of the truck and then hop up on a fence.  Interesting to see a beautiful peacock in the wild!

A friend of ours from Kansas, Roxie Brotsky, gave us a heads-up on a awesome fruit market that also serves great smoothies, called "Robert is Here Fruit Stand and Farm", so we had to check it out!  

As the story goes, in 1960 when Robert was six years old his father had him sit on the corner of the intersection of the present day fruit stand to sell his cucumbers and no one apparently stopped.   The next day Robert's father placed a sign there that said "Robert is Here" which attracted customers and he sold out by noon that day.  Since the young man was in school, Robert's mom made arrangements for the bus to pick him up and drop him off at the fruit stand.  He sold fruit and vegetables in the morning before school and left money in a can for the honor system while he was gone.  The business continued to grow.  At nine years old Robert hired a neighbor lady to work for him while he was at school.  And on it goes.  

Today Robert runs a very successful fruit and vegetable market along with a tropical "smoothie" drink bar and sandwich grill.   In the back he has a mini farm with all sorts of birds, chickens, cattle, goats, tortoises, farm equipment, etc.

 

The assortment of fruits and vegetables for sale was amazing.  This is just a small sampling, but here are a few photos:

While Doreen was shopping I got in line to order us each a smoothie.  It was lunchtime so there were a lot of people there.  Doreen wanted Key Lime, but that was only available in a shake, so she got that and I got a mango shake.  They were delicious!

Here is Doreen's assortment:

On the way back to the campground we fueled the truck for the trip on Sunday and found diesel for $2.799 a gallon, 20 cents per gallon cheaper than anywhere around here.  The fuel shortage due to the pipeline shutdown is not impacting southern Florida!

This afternoon we enjoyed the swimming pool again then back to the RV to watch the Cubs beat the Detroit Tigers 4-2.  Tomorrow we will clean, and do all of our preparatory stuff before we leave Sunday morning.  One of our grandsons, Jennifer's son Lucas,  is being confirmed in the Catholic church in Kalamazoo MI  tomorrow so we are able to tune into that live via Facebook.  Another of our grandson's, Dan's son Daniel, will be playing baseball and we will tune into that live broadcast via an app called Game Changer.  Technology allows us to stay connected and we love it!  

We will be looking north for a glimpse of the Space-X Falcon-9 Starlink launch tomorrow afternoon from Cape Canaveral, but not getting our hopes up.  Sunday we  move from our current campground here in Miami to Jetty Park in Cape Canaveral and we hope we will be able to see the Monday Atlas-5 launch since we will be a mere 12 miles from it!