Judy Peterson
Prudential Fox & Roach Devon Home Marketing Center
Phone: 610-889-5509
E-mail: judypete@ix.netcom.com
Relocation Expert and Marketing Specialist, e-PRO Certified Realtor and Accredited Buyer Representative offers a wealth of information for Chester County PA and The Philadelphia Main Line PA.

Pamela B. Carr
Town and Country Realty
Phone: 717-299-4885
E-mail: pam@pamcarr.com
Specializing in YOUR home! Service, knowledge, integrity and professionalism is what this Lancaster County Realtor offers you and your family!

Tom Heller, ABR
Gold Key Real Estate
Phone: 717-242-9151
E-mail: goldkey@lcworkshop.com
Serving Mifflin and Juniata Counties.  Buying or selling real estate & appraising.

Tracey Baum
ERA Johnson Real Estate Inc.
Phone: 724-662-2740 or 800-776-8913
E-mail: tbaum@infonline.net
We provide quality service to Mercer County.

Dave Kovaleski
Century 21 Select Group
Phone: 570-241-5893

Pocono real estate and homes for sale. Search through all available properties in the Poconos of Pennsylvania.

Kenneth R. Styer
Kenneth R. Styer Real Estate
Phone: 610-469-9001
E-mail: styerrealestate@styerrealestate.com
Real estate in Chester County, Montgomery County, Berks County PA. Resale, new construction, land & commercial.

Don Myers
Coldwell Banker University Realty
Phone: 800-669-4925
E-mail: donmyers@myersfarm.com
27 year specialist in farms, farmettes, and rural land throughout central Pennsylvania. I would be pleased to work with you.

Vickie Cohen
Long & Foster
Phone: 215-369-8618

Web Site
I serve Buyers and Sellers in the Yardley, Newtown, Upper Makefield, New Hope/Solebury, and Wrightstown areas.

John Herreid
Keller Williams Real Estate
Phone: 610-892-8300

Wallingford Real Estate
Wallingford real estate and Swarthmore real estate specialist. Also find the best homes for sale in Media, Springfield, Glen Mills, Rose Valley and all of Deleware County PA. Get valuable community information and expert advice!

Kathy Hanigan
Patriot's Realty, Inc.
Phone: 215-441-4710 ext. 149

Helping BUYERS & SELLERS, Investors and 1st time BUYERS. Browse online listings for Warrington real estate and Philadelphia real estate, as well as homes in Warminster, Jamison, and Southampton.

The best farming areas are the counties of southeastern Pennsylvania, the Great Valley, and the fertile limestone and alluvial valleys of central Pennsylvania. Dairying is important throughout this area, and a wide variety of crops are grown. A single farm sometimes raises dairy cows, beef, poultry, hay, grain, fruits, and vegetables. Northeastern and northwestern Pennsylvania specialize in dairy farming, although fruits and vegetables are cultivated intensively near the shores of Lake Erie. Southwestern Pennsylvania has many dairy and truck farms.

The sale of livestock and livestock products accounts for 71 percent of Pennsylvania’s farm income, and the state ranks among the nation’s leading producers of milk, dairy products, poultry, and eggs. Dairying is carried on in all the farming areas of the state and predominates near some of the larger cities. While southeastern and southwestern Pennsylvania combine dairying with general farming, dairying is the chief agricultural activity in the northeast and northwest. Most dairy farmers also raise poultry, and many raise beef cattle. The extreme southwestern corner of the state, with its hilly pastureland, is noted as a sheep-raising district.

With a growing season ranging from three to seven months, Pennsylvania can produce a wide variety of crops. Although hay and corn are leading crops, their cash value is not especially high, because much of the hay and grain grown on Pennsylvania farms is used to feed livestock and poultry. Winter wheat, which is used to make a fine cake and pastry flour, is an important crop in the southeast. Buckwheat, which does not require a long growing season, is a major crop in the northeast. Other important crops include potatoes, oats, rye, barley, and a variety of truck crops.

There are two important orchard regions in the state. Apples and peaches are grown on the slopes of South Mountain in the southeast. Near the shore of Lake Erie, apples, cherries, and grapes are important crops. Because there is much less danger of frost near the lakeshore than farther inland, this area is well suited to fruit growing.

Forest-related industries include the manufacture of lumber, pulp, veneer, furniture, and the processing of wood for chemicals. Tanneries use acids from tree bark to cure leather. Wood-chemical plants, which use small trees and brush after the larger trees have been cut, are located in the northwest. Although the industry is small, Pennsylvania is a leading producer of wood chemicals. Altogether the state’s forests, including forest-related industries, provide jobs for many thousands of people.

Pennsylvania has always ranked high among the nation’s mineral-producing states. It has enormous coal reserves and is the Industrial Age’s oldest producer of petroleum. Limestone, sand and gravel, clay, and peat are also mined or quarried in significant quantities. Fuels are of prime importance, however, and coal, oil, and natural gas made up about four-fifths of the value of the state’s mineral output in the late 1990s. Coal in particular has profoundly affected Pennsylvania’s economic development. It has long been an essential source of fuel for the state’s steel mills.

While oil was once the chief product pumped from Pennsylvania’s ground, the value of natural gas extracted in the late 1990s was far greater than the value of the petroleum processed. In 1999 production of natural gas was 175 billion cu ft.

Limestone is distributed widely throughout southeastern and central Pennsylvania. It is used as a building stone, a source of lime, a flux in blast furnaces, and as an ingredient in Portland cement. Pennsylvania is one of the nation’s largest cement producers, and much of its output comes from an area north of Allentown in the Lehigh Valley. Slag, a waste product of the steel industry, is widely used in the manufacture of construction materials. Sandstone is found along the major stream courses, particularly in those regions that once were glaciated, and provides the raw material for the state’s glass-manufacturing industry. Clay is widely scattered throughout the state, with clay-products plants making such items as tile, sewer pipe, and heat-resistant materials for industrial furnaces.

Because of the wide variety of manufactures made in Pennsylvania, including basic industrial goods as well as consumer goods, the state was long known as the Workshop of America. This is less true today, however, because of major declines in the iron and steel and machinery industries. Until the 1980s primary metals industries ranked first in the state. In the late 1970s and first half of the 1980s the iron and steel industry was savaged by national economic recessions, high costs, aging equipment, and foreign competition. Many steel mills were permanently closed, and thousands of workers lost their jobs. Between 1977 and 1986, more than 100,000 jobs disappeared in the primary metals industries. Over the same period, 36,000 jobs disappeared in the machinery industry. By 1993 the manufacturing sector held 13 percent fewer jobs than ten years before.

The manufacture of electronic equipment has become the state’s leading industry. Firms making products such as communications systems, silicon wafers for semiconductors, and electronic components for engines have made Pennsylvania a leading high-technology manufacturing state.

The production of chemicals, principally pharmaceuticals, is the state’s second largest industry in terms of valued added by manufacturing. Other manufactures by biotechnology firms include medical devices.

Food processing is now the state’s third largest industry. Pennsylvania is the nation’s leading producer of chocolate and cocoa products and ranks high in the production of ice cream, potato chips, pretzels, sausages, and canned mushrooms.

Because the decline in the U.S. steel industry has been nationwide, Pennsylvania still makes more steel than any other state, and the primary metal industry remains a large contributor to the gross state product. The iron and steel industry originated in southeastern Pennsylvania near the state’s iron ore deposits. As coke, made from bituminous coal, replaced charcoal as a blast-furnace fuel, the industry moved westward to the Pittsburgh area. Here, bituminous coal was close at hand and iron ore could be shipped in cheaply from the Lake Superior region and abroad. Pittsburgh’s industrialized area later expanded throughout much of southwestern Pennsylvania.

Complementing Pennsylvania’s iron and steel industry are the factories distributed throughout the state that manufacture hundreds of metal products, including industrial machinery, farm implements, railroad cars and equipment, automobile bodies and parts, scientific instruments, tools and hardware, and metal pipes and tubing. Philadelphia is a major producer of fabricated metal goods, transportation equipment, electrical equipment, and all kinds of machinery. Metalworking plays an important role in the economy of the state’s smaller industrial cities and towns. Along with metal-products plants many industrial towns have clothing factories and textile mills that make yarns, fabrics, and rugs and carpets.

Other leading manufacturers in Pennsylvania include printers and publishers, with hundreds of firms publishing newspapers, periodicals, and books; paper manufacturers, with outputs such as corrugated boxes and sanitary paper products; and industries producing transportation equipment, including aircraft, railroad equipment, motor vehicle parts, and equipment for use in space.

The Philadelphia Metropolitan area, which has been the state’s chief manufacturing center since colonial times, has more than 7,000 factories that turn out an extraordinary array of products, with textiles, clothing, and metal goods leading in importance. Printing and publishing, petroleum refining, and sugar refining are also major industries. Pittsburgh is a major manufacturer of secondary metal goods, chemicals, glass and clay products, and processed foods. Other important industrial areas include Scranton and Wilkes-Barre, the tri-city area of Easton, Allentown, and Bethlehem, and the cities of Reading, York, Lancaster, Harrisburg, Chester, Erie, Johnstown, Altoona, and Williamsport.

Of the electricity generated in Pennsylvania in 1999, 61 percent came from steam-driven power plants burning fossil fuels, mainly coal, and 37 percent came from nuclear power plants. In 2001 the state had 9 operating nuclear reactors. In 1979 a near meltdown of the core in a nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island near Harrisburg resulted in the shutdown of that reactor and, for a short time, the partial evacuation of nearby residents. Only 1 percent of the state’s electricity is generated by hydroelectric facilities.

Tourism is virtually the only industry in the Pocono Mountains, long a popular resort area. In the more rugged woodlands of the Alleghenies several summer and winter resort areas have been developed, including a number of ski resorts. In addition, Pennsylvania’s many historic sites attract millions of visitors yearly.

Real Estate: Ohio - Pennsylvania Relocation

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Official Website for the State of Pennsylvania