you finally get to harvest your first fruit from your orchard. 
I got to experience that today. After 3 years of fighting disease, fruit thieves(Deer and raccoons) and mother nature(late freezes), I have FINALLY successfully grown peaches in my Iowa orchard. What an amazingly rewarding feeling this is. 
Below are the first four contender peaches which I just harvested today.
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I know how you feel. I just eat my first lone pawpaw off of my trees after years of setbacks. If you add up the hours I have in that single fruit it very well may be the worlds most expensive pawpaw. It was worth it though.
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Fine looking fruit
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Congratulations Ron. The peaches look delicious. I like harvesting my own fruit from the back yard but my real rewards are from enjoying what I’m doing and being able to share my hobby with a bunch of eager grands.
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Cool! Congrats, Ron. I bet it is very rewarding indeed to see the “fruits” of your labors. We started our fruit tree odyssey this spring, planting 14 apple, 3 pear and 2 peach trees. I can’t hardly wait to be able to walk out to my “orchard” and enjoy something I planted. But, I’ve probably got at least a two year wait, so I just have to be patient. We planted a Redhaven and Coralstar peach in our patch. I would like to maybe add a few more cold hardy peach trees like Contender, maybe next year.
Please let us know how they taste.
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Outstanding!
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Congrats, they look excellent. I’d eat one!
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Seeing that photo and reading your post made me smile-I’m so happy for you. I will never forget the feeling of accomplishment I had when I picked my first fruit. It is definitely ia a great feeling of accomplishment, and a well earned one. Never forget that even though there are lots of expert fruit growers here so it becomes common and looks easy, but the fact is that growing peaches that look like yours is very difficult. Thousands of Americans try and fail every year for one reason or another. So take pride in your fruit- you have earned it! Only problem is before you finish eating all 3 of those you are going to be thinking about what to plant next so you can have other kinds of fruits and varieties of peaches in a few more years! It never ends!
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Congrats on the harvest! I think the adversity and zone-stretching makes them all the sweeter.
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Wait until you get them by the bucket and start racing with time to process, eat, or give them away while they are still good 
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Congratulations. What a grand achievement. Something you can brag about for the rest of your life. Here’s hoping for many more years of harvest.
You’ll probably get an apple or two next year. What rootstocks are they on?
I used to think that way, but tell myself (1) that you can’t eat money, and (2) the money and time spent pales in comparison to a degree in ag or horticulture.
Exactly.
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Beautiful peaches!
Fresh, tree-ripe fruit is the final reward, but along the way I also really enjoy the challenge, the time outside, the exercise and the chance to share what I am doing with others.
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Congratulations! That beats my fruit count this year by one. Next year the peaches get squirrel protection!
Hey Matt. My apples are on all kind of rootstocks. You can see them on my introduction to GF. The RS’s are : G16, G202, G890, G210, G30, G222, and M7. The reason for all the different RS’s are because I made my tree orders kind of late, in late winter. So, that meant a limited inventory to pick from. So, if I wanted a particular variety, I had to take them in the RS they had. I preferred them to have 9/16 or 11/16 caliper, but had to settle for 7/16 in some cases, including my peaches, which are on Lovell RS.
I did buy a couple of big trees from Lowe’s, so they might produce earlier than the bare roots. One was a 6’ Moonglow pear, and a 6’ Winesap apple. The Winesap has taken to transplant really well, despite being stripped of a lot of leaves by deer back in May. It has since replaced most of the leaves, and even added some little branches.
The Moonglow was attacked by bugs, I think stinkbugs, and lost quite a few leaves, but it seems to taken to transplant OK. My Orient pear has exploded with leaves and small branches, and the Pineapple pear has shot out a few leaves and little branches. Both of these are on Callery RS.
A lot of my apple bareroots had some kind of leaf disease hit them pretty hard. From what I can tell, it’s CAR. We’ve had a cool, wet spring, and a hot and rainy summer, so that probably doesn’t help. Plus, the bugs just shredded some leaves. But, they’re mostly sprouting new little branches, which is what we need.
Beautiful peaches. Congratluations!