大学英语综合教程 第三册 1textA

[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,