全新版大学英语综合教程课文原文.docx

1、全新版大学英语综合教程课文原文unit 1 Mr. Doherty Builds His Dream Life1 There are two things I have always wanted to do - write and live on a farm. Today Im doing both. I am not in E. B. Whites class as a writer or in my neighbors league as a farmer, but Im getting by. And after years of frustration with city and

2、suburban living, my wife Sandy and I have finally found contentment here in the country. 2 Its 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 woo

3、d to just about make it through the heating season. 3 Its 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 l

4、owing. 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 s

5、trawberries 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 mont

6、h, well 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, pu

7、rsues 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, takes organ lessons on her own, does research and typing for me, writes an article herself now and

8、then, tends the flower beds, stacks a little wood and delivers the eggs. There is, as the old saying goes, no rest for the wicked on a place like this - and not much for the virtuous either. 6 None of us will ever forget our first winter. We were buried under five feet of snow from December through

9、March. While one storm after another blasted huge drifts up against the house and barn, we kept warm inside burning our own wood, eating our own apples and loving every minute of it. 7 When spring came, it brought two floods. First the river overflowed, covering much of our land for weeks. Then the

10、growing season began, swamping us under wave after wave of produce. Our freezer filled up with cherries, raspberries, strawberries, asparagus, peas, beans and corn. Then our canned-goods shelves and cupboards began to grow with preserves, tomato juice, grape juice, plums, jams and jellies. Eventuall

11、y, the basement floor disappeared under piles of potatoes, squash and pumpkins, and the barn began to fill with apples and pears. It was amazing. 8 The next year we grew even more food and managed to get through the winter on firewood that was mostly from our own trees and only 100 gallons of heatin

12、g oil. At that point I began thinking seriously about quitting my job and starting to freelance. The timing was terrible. By then, Shawn and Amy, our oldest girls were attending expensive Ivy League schools and we had only a few thousand dollars in the bank. Yet we kept coming back to the same quest

13、ion: Will there ever be a better time? The answer, decidedly, was no, and so - with my employers blessings and half a years pay in accumulated benefits in my pocket - off I went. 9 There have been a few anxious moments since then, but on balance things have gone much better than we had any right to

14、expect. For various stories of mine, Ive crawled into black-bear dens for Sports Illustrated, hitched up dogsled racing teams for Smithsonian magazine, checked out the Lake Champlain monster for Science Digest, and canoed through the Boundary Waters wilderness area of Minnesota for Destinations. 10

15、Im not making anywhere near as much money as I did when I was employed full time, but now we dont need as much either. I generate enough income to handle our $600-a-month mortgage payments plus the usual expenses for a family like ours. That includes everything from music lessons and dental bills to

16、 car repairs and college costs. When it comes to insurance, we have a poor mans major-medical policy. We have to pay the first $500 of any medical fees for each member of the family. It picks up 80% of the costs beyond that. Although we are stuck with paying minor expenses, our premium is low - only $560 a year - and we are covered against catastrophe. Aside from that and the policy on our two cars at $400 a year, we have no other insurance. But we are