I’m not eating fruit yet, not even enjoying the shade from a big pear tree but I feel like a success. The trees are in. Pears, peaches, and apple trees for my area and they look wonderful. The peach trees already have little peaches!
Here’s a few pictures. 
Young pear trees.
Soon we will get the ground ready for grapes. I have Muscadines starting. They do well in this area of Florida.
When I first started the orchard all I could think of is eating peaches and pears until my stomach burst. I knew I had to cut down a few trees and thought clearing tree stumps would be a quick get-er-done. Not so. I was able to get a few stumps out but I still had about 30 more that needed clearing. I finally gave in and hired a stump grinder. He was out this morning and ground out the 30 or so stumps in one day, something that would have taken me a month of Sundays to clear with the backhoe. But at least it is done.
Each ground stump left a four foot mound of sawdust. My good buddy came over with his tractor and leveled it out. Looks pretty good now. While he was doing the leveling I thought I would take a trip to the lumber yard and get some wood for a deck I am building. I got a little down the road when I heard a vaguely familiar thump-thump-thump, the trailer tire blew. I drove back to the house with that tire flopping as I drove down the road. So much for getting a head start on the lumber. Took me 4 hours to get that **** tire off the trailer.
Hopefully tomorrow will go better. The trees are blossoming and look beautiful….and need to go in the ground as soon as possible. I still have to make wrap for the trees to protect them from the deer. They will eat those tender green leaves in a heartbeat. There is an end in sight, though. I can almost taste the peaches now.
