Unit 1-general reading课文参考.docx

MR.DOHERTY BUILDS HIS DREAM LIFE??Jim Doherty?1?There are two things I have always wanted to do write and live on a?farm.?Today I’m?doing both.?I am not in E.B.White’s class as a writer or in my neighbors’ league as a farmer, but I’m getting by. And after years of frustration with?city and suburban living, my wife Sandy and I have finally found contentment here in the?country.?2?It’s a self-reliant sort of life. We grow nearly all of our fruits and vegetables. Our hens keep us in eggs,?with several dozen left over to sell each week. Our bees provide us with honey,?and we cut enough wood to just about make it through the heating season.?3?It’s a satisfying life too. In the summer we canoe on the river, go picnicking in the woods and take long bicycle rides. In the winter we ski and skate. We get excited about sunsets. We love the smell of the earth warming and the sound of cattle lowing. We watch for hawks in the sky and deer in the cornfields.4??But the good life can get pretty tough. Three months ago when it was 30 below, we spent two miserable days hauling firewood up the river on a sled. Three months from now, it will be 95 above and we will be cultivating corn, weeding strawberries and killing chickens. Recently, Sandy and I had to retile the back roof. Soon Jim, 16 and Emily, 13, the youngest of our four children, will help me make some long-overdue ?improvements on ?the outdoor toilet that supplements our indoor plumbing when we are working outside. Later this month, we’ll spray the orchard, paint the barn, plant the garden and clean the hen house before the new chicks arrive.?5?In between such chores, I manage to spend 50 to 60 hours a week at the typewriter or doing reporting for the freelance articles I sell to magazines and newspapers. Sandy, meanwhile, pursues her own demanding schedule. Besides the usual household routine, she oversees the garden and beehives, bakes bread, cans and freezes, drives the kids to their music lessons, practices with them, tak