A Multigenerational Return To Land
Greg Homan went into Florida citrus straight out of high school in 1974. He’d been farming his whole life — row crops in Ohio, then citrus, hay, and green beans in Florida. He learned the land the way you learn a language as a child: completely, and without thinking about it.
He survived the freeze of 1983. He survived the freeze of 1985. When the third freeze came in 1989 and took everything that was left, he walked out of the grove for what he thought was the last time.
He went into commercial real estate. He built a career. He even came to own the Citrus Tower — the iconic landmark in Clermont, Lake County, built in 1956 at the height of Florida’s citrus boom so tourists could gaze out over endless groves. By the time Greg owned it, what you saw from the observation deck wasn’t groves anymore. It was rooftops. Subdivisions. The same quiet erasure happening in every direction.
He watched the industry that had shaped him disappear one grove at a time. Greening disease. More freezes. Hurricanes. Development swallowing the land. Cheap foreign competition undercutting prices for the farmers still standing. Thirty-three thousand jobs gone. Billions of dollars in losses. A landscape transformed.
Then came retirement. And with it, the pull back to the land he’d never stopped loving.
The Last Load
On a shelf in the family’s home, there’s an old photograph. It shows a man named Russell — Ben’s great-grandfather — standing in front of a Chevrolet farm truck loaded with fruit. It was the last truckload he ever pulled out of his Florida citrus grove. The photograph was taken before the 1989 freeze took everything.
The same freeze that ended Greg Homan’s first chapter in citrus.
Greg Homan has been farming since before he could drive. He never really stopped.
Jim Lee’s Grove
The property had belonged to Greg’s father-in-law, Jim Lee. When Jim first found it, the grove was abandoned — a freeze-out property completely overgrown and forgotten. An eyesore to most people. But Greg and Jim both saw what others missed: the land is high and dry, slow to let cold air settle in the valley. Good soil. The exact conditions citrus likes.
After the grove was established, Uncle Matt’s Organic — one of Florida’s most respected organic citrus operations — came knocking. Greg and Jim sat in their office and listened to the presentation. When it was over, Greg’s advice was simple: make the transition. It took three years to earn full USDA organic certification. They did it for two reasons: the health of the land and the people eating from it, and the straightforward reality that the organic market pays what great citrus deserves.
Jim Lee is gone now. Keeping his legacy alive — on the land he saw clearly when no one else did — is one of the two reasons Greg gets up before daylight and drives his tractor through the grove with flood lights on. The other is leaving something real for his children.
Greg Homan & Team
Greg Homan and the crew of Clermont Citrus Care, Lake County, Florida — 1980s. These were the guys who knew the grove row by row, before the freeze of 1989 changed everything.
The Adopt-a-Tree Idea
That part came from Scott Homan, a family member who understood something important: public ownership creates public support. When people have a stake in where their food comes from, they show up for it. They tell their friends. They come back year after year.
Scott was right. Greg & Suzie Homan, Ben Homan, Lilly & Scott Muszynski, and the whole Homan family are building My Fruit Tree not just as a farm — but as a community. One named, transparent, organically certified tree at a time.
What We Want You to Taste
Greg has been eating Florida grapefruit his whole life. He knows what it can taste like — what it’s supposed to taste like — when it’s allowed to ripen fully on the tree instead of being picked early for a grocery store shelf a thousand miles away.
He wants your first bite to stop you mid-sentence. The sweetness. The aroma. He’ll show you how to carve a grapefruit into a drinking cup and drink the fresh juice straight out of the fruit itself.
When your tree produces fruit, and you hold it in your hands, you’ll feel the pride of knowing you helped grow something real — grown on a plant, not manufactured in a plant.