They'll ripen up some but quality probably won't be as good as tree ripened. I think you could have left them on the tree longer without major losses. Those are greener than even what is picked commercially hard ripe. I hope this doesn't sound harsh. I'm just trying to help you grow the great fruit you deserve.

If you like them that's all that counts.

I've seen a few things to get rid of ants. mix confectioners sugar and baking soda in equal parts, place near trails or nest. Ants want to eat sugar part but cant separate baking soda which makes chemical reaction in ants after they take back to nest and eat (think baking soda volcano) can also use Borax and confectioners sugar.

I'm curious about the ants: What were they doing with those maggots. It looked as if they were placing them all around where the stem meets fruit and chewing holes there. Did I catch these peaches just in the nick of time, or do the ants stop the hole when tiny, doing some kind of farming operation with those maggots? I just saw the fruit starting to ripen up, and I couldn't imagine a breach in the skin covered with ants and maggots being a good thing with the tree covered in bugs and birds.

A few of the peaches had half turn to mush or had large holes with lots of ants and maggots in them and other bugs. I was worried that would be the result for all the fruit within a week if I waited.

Some of the smaller fruit had detached from the branch on its own but was still in the bag. Amazingly it looked fine and ripe and we ate it when I got home and it was delicious.

I've left quite a bit of fruit still on the tree as an experiment to let it ripen further and see what happens. Next time I'm up I'll put tanglefoot type stuff around the trunk. Due to the layout of the situation it will be of limited use, but it may slow them down at least.

I also did a lot of pruning to open it up and get some sun in on the fruit. Is it dangerous to remove very large branches that are going much too high? or should I wait for the winter for that?

by the way, a student gave me this afternoon a couple of store-bought peaches which are ripe. I placed them on top center for comparison with my tree picked peaches. They are larger, however mine are sweeter. In a taste test everybody preferred my peaches.

my wife was stunned that we got any peaches off the tree at all. A much more experienced older farmer locally cut her tree down, because all the fruit had bugs in them and it was too difficult to spray pesticide properly. I don't think she used bags.

"I thought I would give them a shot them rather than throw them in the compost." No need to put anything on the compost unripe or not. You can always cook them.

Ants are actually "farmers" of a sort. They are known to store aphid eggs in their nests for winter and place the aphids on plants to graze (suck sap, kill plant) because aphids exude a "honeydew" the ants eat for food. I have seen ants carrying aphids to place on trees. They decimated my dwarf cherry tree this year covered with black aphids so I only got one cherry I bagged, but when ladybugs larvae hatched I watched them scarfing up a feast. I'm trying to reduce ant population now. I'm not surprised if they place other grubs to fatten up to eat later or convert their food. Kill ants to reduce other insects since these "farmers" are outsmarting us.

Can you make wine or schnapps from the green peaches?If so, I want the recipe.

I was able to catch on film the ants I'm talking about:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5b_W0IWqOA&feature=youtu.be

Harvested a bunch more, 67 in total so far, everything is going great.