November 12, 2010. Artemas, Pa. Bedford.

Once upon a time, Bedford was a busy important town, complete with industries, manufacturing and commerce, in addition to being the county court house. It still has commerce and the county seat, but not much is happening. Today we drove up to register for the Green and Clean program. The state encourages agriculture by giving a reduction in taxes if you own a working farm and do not develop the land into houses. This is a new program. Alan has been trying to get us to go up to the county house and register our farm, but of course we have not done it...until now. Except, now the applications were closed for next year at the end of October, but we signed up for year 2012. This is good.

We could not find the court house. Although we have been to Bedford since 1973, we only use about two blocks of the town. The rest we ignore. We knew the court house was new, but we were not able to find the place so finally I phoned the tax office and they gave us directions. Turned out we were right outside. It was very clever. They kept the old buildings at street level and built the new modern building right in the center, so the inside is modern and the outside is old.

While we were driving around lost, we discovered many beautiful old homes. Once upon a time, this town had people who had money. It is a lovely place and I hope it continues to thrive. And we intend to save our taxes.