Knaus Berry Farm Moved. It Landed Three Days from the Redland's Busiest Weekend of the Year.

Knaus Berry Farm reopens for the season on October 13, and for the first time in almost seventy years, the line for cinnamon rolls will form at a different address. The farm moved a few miles into the Redland late last year, to 16790 SW 177th Avenue, under new ownership that kept the Knaus family on as consultants and carried over the recipes, the staff, and even the original 1980s milkshake stand. Three days after that reopening, the Redland International Orchid Festival opens its gates at Fruit & Spice Park on SW 187th Avenue, a few minutes up the same stretch of the Redland's agricultural grid. Two of the season's biggest draws now sit close enough together that residents who used to treat them as separate errands, spread across separate months, will find them stacked into the same October weekend.

That proximity is not something the farm planned around. It's a byproduct of where the new ownership group found available land. But it changes how the next six weeks actually work for anyone who lives out here and plans a fall around them.

What Actually Changed at Knaus

The essentials held. The farm's own site confirms the October 13 reopening date, and NBC 6's coverage of the ownership change lays out what moved and what didn't: the Knaus family, who trace back to 1956 and are Dunkers rather than the Amish neighbors often assume, is staying on as consultants. Longtime bakery manager Thomas Blocher remains closely involved. The recipes are unchanged. The workflow that regulars learned to respect, the one that makes you plan your morning around the farm instead of the other way around, stayed intact too.

One thing didn't carry over cleanly. U-pick strawberries and tomatoes, the reason a lot of families treated a Knaus trip as a half-day outing rather than a bakery stop, won't be available this season. The timing of the move didn't leave room for it, and the new owners have said it's expected to return next year. If u-pick was your excuse to bring the kids and make a morning of it, this season's version is a shorter errand: cinnamon rolls, herb bread, a milkshake, and a new address to remember.

Why the Calendar Compression Matters

Three days is a tight window. The Orchid Festival, running October 16 through 18 at Fruit & Spice Park, has been building toward nearly thirty years of reputation and draws growers from as far as Brazil, Thailand, and Malaysia alongside the usual weekend crowd of families and plant collectors. It's the kind of event that already fills the Redland's narrow farm roads with more traffic than they see most of the year. Add a bakery that's spent decades training South Florida to show up early and wait, now sitting a short drive from those same festival grounds instead of on the other side of Homestead, and the two events start to function as one long weekend rather than two separate outings on the calendar.

For residents who've done this before, that's worth planning around. Weekday mornings at Knaus, before the Orchid Festival crowd arrives, are going to be a different experience than a Saturday that tries to do both in one trip.

The Rest of the Season Is Already Running

Knaus and the Orchid Festival are the calendar anchors, but they're not the whole season. A five-acre corn maze and pumpkin patch spread across 40 acres of Redland farmland is already open daily and runs through November 15, giving families a lower-key weekday option that doesn't require weekend traffic through the festival corridor. Patch of Heaven Sanctuary has a farm-to-table Thai pop-up running weekly on Saturdays and Sundays through December 27, tucked into the grounds of a working sanctuary rather than a standalone restaurant. And Schnebly Redland's Winery & Brewery keeps its weekend afternoons built around live music and tropical fruit wines in the same garden setting it's used for years.

None of these compete with Knaus or the Orchid Festival for attention. They're spread across different weekends and different corners of the Redland's farm belt, which means a family that skips the October 13 reopening rush still has a full season of lower-traffic options between now and the holidays.

A Different Kind of Change, on a Different Street

While the Redland's harvest season plays out on its usual stretch of SW 170s and 180s avenues, a separate transformation is underway closer to downtown. The Homestead Community Redevelopment Agency has finalized the sale of roughly 2.5 acres of the old City Hall site to Flanigan's Enterprises for a new restaurant and retail store, part of a broader push to reposition the 16-acre former City Hall property for mixed-use redevelopment. Krome Avenue itself is getting a utility and streetscape overhaul between Lucy Street and NW 4th Street, with wider sidewalks planned for outdoor dining and new lighting along the corridor. The CRA has also demolished a derelict building on Mowry Drive to make way for a new Paseo Park, meant to connect the 800-plus public parking spaces at Homestead Station directly to Losner Park and the historic downtown core.

That's a genuinely different kind of change than what's happening in the Redland. Downtown Homestead's redevelopment is about infrastructure and new commercial anchors landing on an urban grid. The Redland's fall season is about agricultural traditions that have run on the same rhythm for decades, now compressed into a tighter window by one business's relocation. Residents who split their time between the two don't need to treat them as one story. They're two different reasons to be out and about in Homestead this fall, on two different sides of town.

Planning the Next Six Weeks

If you're weighing when to make the Knaus trip, the practical read is this: the farm reopens October 13, the Orchid Festival's heaviest crowds land October 16 through 18, and the corn maze and Patch of Heaven's Thai nights give you lower-traffic alternatives on the weekends in between. U-pick isn't back yet, so treat this season's visit as a bakery run rather than a field outing, at least until next year.

None of this requires a special trip if you already live out here. It's the same Redland, running the same kind of season it always has, just with its two biggest draws now sharing a tighter stretch of road than they used to.

If you're weighing what a home near that stretch of the Redland is actually worth this season, or whether the corridor's changes are shifting how buyers see it, Jordan Casañas can walk you through what the local market is showing right now.