大学英语综合教程 第三册 1textA

英语听力 2019-07-16 00:12:57 138
[00:00.00]In America many people have a romantic idea of life in the countryside. Many living in towns
[00:08.12]dream of starting up their own farm, of living off the land .Few get round to putting their dreams into practice.
[00:17.21]This is perhaps just as well, as the life of a farmer is far from easy, as Jim Doherty discovered
[00:25.73]when he set out to combine being a writer with running a farm. Nevertheless, as he explains,
[00:33.46]he has no regrets and remains enthusiastic about his decision to change his way of life.
[00:41.61]MR.DOHERTY BUILDS HIS DREAM LIFEBy   Jim Doherty
[00:48.12]There are two things I have always wanted to do--write and live on a farm. Today I\'m doing both.
[00:56.87]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.
[01:05.18]And after years of frustration with city and suburban living,
[01:10.61]my wife Sandy and I have finally found contentment here in the country.
[01:17.27]2 It\'s a self-reliant sort of life.We grow nearly all of our fruits and vegetables.Our hens keep us in eggs,
[01:27.01]with several dozen left over to sell each week.Our bees provide us with honey,
[01:33.91]and we cut enough wood to just about make it through the heating season.
[01:39.71]3 It\'s a satisfying life too.In the summer we canoe on the river,go picnicking in the woods
[01:48.25]and take long bicycle rides.In the winter we ski and skate.We get excited about sunsets.
[01:57.60]We love the smell of the earth warming and the sound of cattle lowing.
[02:03.95]We watch for hawks in the sky and deer in the cornfields.
[02:09.52]4 But the good life can get pretty tough.Three months ago when it was 30below,we spent two miserable days
[02:19.55]hauling firewood up the river on a sled.Three months from now,it will be 95 above and we will be cultivating corn,
[02:29.94]weeding strawberries and killing chickens.Recently,Sandy and I had to retile the back roof.
[02:39.37]Soon Jim,16 and Emily,13,the youngest of our four children,
[02:46.61]will help me make some long-overdue improvements on the out-door toilet that supplements our indoor plumbing
[02:55.07]when we are working outside.Later this month,we\'ll spray the orchard,
[03:01.76]paint the barn,plant the garden and clean the hen house before the new chicks arrive.
[03:09.00]5 In between such chores,I manage to spend 50 to 60 hours a week at the typewriter or doing reporting
[03:17.98]for the freelance articles I sell to magazines and newspapers.Sandy,meanwhile,pursues her own demanding schedule.
[03:27.67]Besides the usual household routine,she oversees the garden and beehives,bakes bread,cans and freezes,
[03:37.16]drives the kids to their music lessons,practices with them,takes organ lessons on her own,does research and typing for me,
[03:46.69]writes an article herself now and then,tends the flower beds,stacks a little wood and delivers the eggs.
[03:55.96]There is,as the old saying goes,no rest for the wicked on a place like this--and not much for the virtuous either.
[04:05.05]6 None of us will ever forget our first winter.We were buried under five feet of snow from December through March.
[04:14.15]While one storm after another blasted huge drifts up against the house and barn,
[04:20.86]we kept warm inside burning our own wood,eating our wen apples and loving every minute of it.
[04:29.19]7 When spring came,it brought two floods.First the river overflowed,covering much of our land for weeks.
[04:38.00]Then the growing season began,swamping us under wave after wave of produce.
[04:44.58]Our freezer filled up with cherries,raspberries,strawberries,asparagus,peas,beans and corn.
[04:54.90]Then our cannedgoods shelves and cupboards began to grow with preserves,tomato juice,grape juice,
[05:04.61]plums,jams and jellies.Eventually,the basement floor disappeared under piles of potatoes,
[05:13.78]squash and pumpkins,and the barn began to fill with apples and pears.It was amazing.
[05:21.15]8 The next year we grew even more food and managed to get through the winter on firewood 

[05:28.23]that was mostly from our own trees and only 100 gallons of heating oil.
[05:34.71]At that point I began thinking seriously about quitting my job and starting to freelance.The timing was terrible.
[05:44.14]By then,Shawn and Amy,our oldest girls were attending expensive Ivy League schools
[05:51.82]and we had only a few thousand dollars in the bank.Yet we kept coming back to the same question:
[05:59.52]Will there ever be a better time?The answer,decidedly,was no,
[06:05.71]and so--with my employer\'s blessings and half a year\'s pay in accumulated benefits in my pocket--off I went.
[06:14.57]9 There have been a few anxious moments since then,but on balance things have gone much better
[06:22.30]than we had any right to expect.For various stories of mine,I\'ve crawled into black-bear dens for Sports Illustrated,
[06:31.84]hitched up dogsled racing teams for Smithsonian magazine,checked out the Lake Champlain "monster"
[06:40.14]for Science Digest,and canoed through the Boundary Waters wilderness area of Minnesota for Destinations.
[06:48.92]10 I\'m not making anywhere near as much money as I did when I was employed full time,
[06:54.90]but now we don\'t need as much either.I generate enough income
[07:01.28]to handle our$600-a-month mortgage payments plus the usual expenses for a family like ours.
[07:09.19]That includes everything from music lessons and dental bills to car repairs and college costs.
[07:16.22]When it comes to insurance,we have a poor man\'s major-medical policy.
[07:22.12]We have to pay the first$500 of any medical fees for each member of the family.
[07:28.65]It picks up 80% of the costs beyond that.Although we are stuck with paying minor expenses,our premium is low
[07:38.21]--only$560 a year--and we are covered against catastrophe.Aside from that
[07:51.98]But we are setting aside$2,000 a year in an IRA.
[07:57.28]11 We\'ve been able to make up the difference in income by cutting back
[08:02.51]without appreciably lowering our standard of living.We continue to dine out once or twice a month,
[08:09.87]but now we patronize local restaurants instead of more expensive places in the city.
[08:16.72]We still attend the opera and ballet in Milwaukee but only a few times a year.
[08:22.86]We eat less meat,drink cheaper wine and see fewer movies.Extravagant Christmases are a memory,
[08:32.18]and we combine vacations with story assignments....
[08:37.07]12 I suspect not everyone who loves the country would be happy living the way we do.
[08:43.47]It takes a couple of special qualities.One is a tolerance for solitude.Because we are so busy and on such a tight budget,
[08:54.02]we don\'t entertain much.During the growing season there is no time for socializing anyway.
[09:01.65]Jim and Emily are involved in school activities,but they too spend most of their time at home.
[09:09.15]13 The other requirement is energy--a lot of it.The way to make self-sufficiency work on a small scale
[09:17.71]is to resist the temptation to buy a tractor and other expensive laborsaving devices.
[09:24.77]Instead,you do the work yourself.The only machinery we own
[09:31.19](not counting the lawn mower) is a little three-horsepower rotary cultivator and a 16-inch chain saw.
[09:39.74]14 How much longer we\'ll have enough energy to stay on here is anybody\'s guess--perhaps for quite a while,
[09:47.28]perhaps not.When the time comes,we\'ll leave with a feeling of sorrow but also with a sense of pride
[09:55.25]at what we\'ve been able to accomplish.We should make a fair profit on the sale of the place,too.
[10:02.62]We\'ve invested about$35,000 of our own money in it,and we could just about double that if we sold today.
[10:11.45]But this is not a good time to sell.Once economic conditions improve,
[10:18.03]however,demand for farms like ours should be strong again.
[10:23.36]15 We didn\'t move here primarily to earn money though.We came because we wanted to improve the quality of our lives.
[10:31.77]When I watch Emily collecting eggs in the evening,
[10:36.06]fishing with Jim on the river or enjoying an old-fashioned picnic in the orchard with the entire family,

[10:43.37]I know we\'ve found just what we were looking for.
[10:48.49]get by                          frustration                     suburban                        contentment
[10:55.41]过得去          挫折            郊外的          满足                  
[11:02.33]honey                           make it                         canoe                           ski
[11:05.77]蜂蜜            成功            独木舟          滑雪
[11:09.20]skate                           sunset                          low                             hawk
[11:12.04]溜冰            日落            哞哞叫          鹰
[11:14.87]deer                            haul                            firewood                        sled
[11:18.14]鹿              搬运            木柴            雪橇
[11:21.40]retile                          long-overdue                    improvement                     supplement
[11:25.75]重新用瓦盖      拖了很久的      改善            补充
[11:30.10]indoor                          spray                           orchard                         barn
[11:33.13]室内的          喷洒            果园            谷仓
[11:36.16]chick                           typewriter                      freelance                       pursue
[11:40.33]小鸡            打字机          自由撰稿人      追求
[11:44.50]household                       oversee                         beehive                         organ
[11:48.10]家庭            看管            蜂窝            风琴
[11:51.71]stack                           wicked                          overflow                        swamp
[11:54.16]将…堆起来      邪恶的          泛滥            淹没
[11:56.62]freezer                         cherry                          raspberry                       asparagus
[12:00.16]冰柜            樱桃            树莓            芦笋
[12:03.70]bean                            canned-goods                    cupboard                        plum
[12:07.01]豆              罐装品          碗橱            李子
[12:10.33]jelly                           squash                          pumpkin                         get through
[12:13.56]果子冻          南瓜属植物      南瓜            通过
[12:16.78]gallon                          at that point                   decidedly                      
[12:21.00]加仑            就在那时        肯定地         
[12:25.22]on balance                      den                             illustrate                      hitch
[12:28.84]总的来说        兽穴            举例说明        用挽具套住
[12:32.46]dogsled                         monster                         digest                          boundary
[12:36.39]狗拉雪橇        怪物            文摘            边界
[12:40.32]wilderness                      generate                        dental
[12:42.74]荒野            形成            牙的
[12:45.15]insurance                       policy                          fee                             pick up
[12:48.48]保险            政策            费              付帐
[12:51.81]minor                           premium                         aside from                      retirement
[12:55.93]较少的          保险费          除了            退休
[13:00.04]cut back                        appreciably                     lower                           dine out
[13:03.87]减少            可观地          降低            外出吃饭
[13:07.70]patronize                       ballet                          extravagant                     suspect
[13:10.90]光顾            芭蕾舞          奢侈的          相信
[13:14.10]solitude                        budget                          requirement                     scale
[13:17.78]孤独            预算            要求            规模
[13:21.46]resist                          temptation                      device
[13:24.98]抵制            诱惑            装置
[13:28.49]horsepower                      rotary                          cultivator
[13:30.95]马力            旋转的          耕耘机
[13:35.53]利润            投资            主要地 新目标大学英语4综合教程答案 艺术类专业大学英语综合教程4答案 新大学英语综合教程卓越篇翻译 新视界大学英语综合教程4unit4 大学英语综合教程三 大学英语综
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