unit 1 Mr. Doherty Builds His Dream Life
In America many people have a romantic idea of life in the countryside. Many living in towns dream of starting up their own farm, of living off the land. Few get round to putting their dreams into practice. This is perhaps just as well, as the life of a farmer is far from easy, as Jim Doherty discovered when he set out to combine being a writer with running a farm. Nevertheless, as he explains, he has no regrets and remains enthusiastic about his decision to change his way of life.
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, takes organ lessons on her own, does research and typing for me, writes an article herself now and 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. 在 6 None of us will ever forget our first winter. We were buried under five feet of snow from December through 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 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. Eventually, 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 heating 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 question: Will there ever be a better time? The answer, decidedly, was no, and so -- with my employer's blessings and half a year's 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 expect. For various stories of mine, I've crawled into black-bear dens for Sports Illustrated, hitched up dogsled racing teams for Smithsonian magazine, checked out the Lake Champlain \wilderness area of Minnesota for Destinations.
10 I'm not making anywhere near as much money as I did when I was employed full time, but now we don't 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 car repairs and college costs. When it comes to insurance, we have a poor man's 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 setting aside $2,000 a year in an IRA.
11 We've been able to make up the difference in income by cutting back without appreciably lowering our standard of living. We continue to dine out once or twice a month, but now we patronize local restaurants instead of more expensive places in the city. We still attend the opera and ballet in Milwaukee but only a few times a year. We eat less meat, drink cheaper wine and see fewer movies. Extravagant Christmases are a memory, and we combine vacations with story assignments...
12 I suspect not everyone who loves the country would be happy living the way we do. It takes a couple of special qualities. One is a tolerance for solitude. Because we are so busy and on such a tight budget, we don't entertain much. During the growing season there is no time for socializing anyway. Jim and Emily are involved in school activities, but they too spend most of their time at home.
13 The other requirement is energy -- a lot of it. The way to make self-sufficiency work on a small scale is to resist the temptation to buy a tractor and other expensive laborsaving devices. Instead, you do the work yourself. The only machinery we own (not counting the lawn mower) is a little three-horsepower rotary cultivator and a 16-inch chain saw.
14 How much longer we'll have enough energy to stay on here is anybody's guess -- perhaps for quite a while, perhaps not. When the time comes, we'll leave with a feeling of sorrow but also with a sense of pride at what we've been able to accomplish. We should make a fair profit on the sale of the place, too. We've invested about $35,000 of our own money in it, and we could just about double that if we sold today. But this is not a good time to sell. Once economic conditions improve, however, demand for farms like ours should be strong again.
15 We didn't move here primarily to earn money though. We came because we wanted to improve the quality of our lives. When I watch Emily collecting eggs in the evening, fishing with Jim on the river or enjoying an old-fashioned picnic in the orchard with the entire family, I know we've found just what we were looking for.
Donna Barron describes how American family life has changed in recent years. She identifies three forces at work. What are they? Read on to find out. Then ask yourself whether similar forces are at work within China. Will family life here end up going in the same direction?
American Family Life: The Changing Picture
Donna Barron
1 It's another evening in an American household.
2 The door swings open at 5:30 sharp. \and tired after a long day at the office. He is greeted by Mom in her apron, three happy children, and the aroma of a delicious pot roast.
3 After a leisurely meal together, Mom does the dishes. That, after all, is part of her job. The whole family then moves to the living room. There everyone spends the evening playing Scrabble or watching TV.
4 Then everyone is off to bed. And the next morning Dad and the kids wake up to the sounds and smells of Mom preparing pancakes and sausages for breakfast.
5 (1) What? You say that doesn't sound like life in your house? Well, you're not alone. In fact, you're probably in the majority.
6 At one time in America, the above household might have been typical. You can still visit such a home -- on television. Just watch reruns of old situation comedies. (2) Leave it to Beaver, for example, shows Mom doing housework in pearls and high heels. Dad keeps his suit and tie on all weekend. But the families that operate like Beaver Cleaver's are fewer and fewer. They're disappearing because three parts of our lives have changed: the way we work, the way we eat, and the way we entertain ourselves. Becoming aware of the effects of those changes may help us improve family life.
7 Let's look first at the changes in the way we work. Today the words \might not be spoken by dear old Dad. Dear old Mom is just as likely to be saying them. A generation ago, most households could get along on one paycheck -- Dad's. Mom stayed home, at least until the children started school. But today, over half the mothers with young children go to work. An even greater percentage of mothers of older children are in the workforce. And the
number of single-parent homes has mushroomed in the last thirty years.
8 These changes in work have affected children as well as parents. When only Dad went out to work, children came home from school to Mom. (In TV situation comedies, they came home to Mom and home-baked cookies) Today, we'll find them at an after-school program or a neighbor's house. Or they may come home to no one at all. In every community, children are caring for themselves until their parents return from work. Are these children missing out on an important part of childhood? Or are they developing a healthy sense of self-reliance? These are questions that Mrs. Cleaver never had to deal with.
9 In addition, Dad and now Mom are often gone from home longer than ever. Not too long ago, most men worked close to home. The office or factory was just downtown. Dad often walked to work or hitched a ride with a friendly neighbor. But no more.
10 Today's working men and women are commuters. They travel distances to work that would have made their parents gasp. Commutes of forty-five minutes or an hour are common. Workers travel on buses, subways, and crowded highways. Many leave their suburban homes at dawn and don't return until dark. No running home for lunch for today's commuter.
11 And speaking of lunch, there's been a second big change in American family life. If both parents are away from home for long hours, who's whipping up those delicious meals in the kitchen? The answer, more and more, is nobody.
12 These days, few people have time to shop for and prepare \meals. The Cleavers were used to dinners of pot roast or chicken. Potatoes, salad, and vegetables went with the main course, with pie or cake for dessert. But this kind of meal takes several hours to fix. People can't spend hours in the kitchen if they get home at 5:30.
13 So what do working families eat? They choose meals that are easy to prepare or are already prepared. Fast food, takeout, and heat-and-serve dishes make up much of the modern American diet. Dad may arrive home with a bag of Big Macs and shakes. Mom may phone out for Chinese food or ask the local pizza parlor to deliver. And more and more people rely on microwaves to thaw frozen food in minutes.
14 One consequence of these quickly prepared meals is that families spend less time dining together. And classic fast foods, like hamburgers and fries, are meant to be eaten on the run, not slowly enjoyed at the dinner table. The modern family no longer shares the evening meal. As a result, it no longer shares the day's news... or the feeling of togetherness.
15 Finally, what about after dinner? Is the family evening at least something the Cleavers could relate to?
16 Not a chance.
17 We don't have to look outside the home to see the changes. The modern American family entertains itself in ways the Cleavers would never have dreamed of.
18 Thirty years ago, families gathered around a radio each evening. Later, television took over. Most families had just one set, which they watched together. Today, television and computers bring a dizzying array of entertainment into the home. Cable television provides everything from aerobics classes to Shakespeare. VCRs expand the choices even more. (3) If there's nothing good on network TV or cable, the video store offers the best and worst of Hollywood: recent movies, cartoons, \make viewers part of the action, also provide excitement. Players can compete in the Olympics, search out aliens, or wipe out entire civilizations on their little screens.
