A: Mr. Doherty, you are putting your dream into practice, aren’t you?
B: Yes. 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. A: Compared with the life in the city, how do you like the life here in the countryside？
B: I can say my wife and I have finally found contentment here in the country after years of frustration with the city and suburban living. A: Could you talk about your life here?
B: Well, it is a self-reliant sort of life, and a satisfying life too. We grow nearly all of our fruits and vegetables. Our hens keep us in eggs. In the summer we canoe on the river, go picnicking in the woods and take long bicycle rides, and we ski and skate in the winter. We get excited about sunsets. A: How nice it is! It’s really a desirable life. Then have you encountered any /some difficulty?
B: Yes. The good life can get pretty tough (15). In the first winter, we were buried under five feet of snow from December through March. One storm after another blasted huge drifts up against the house and barn (33). When spring came, it brought a flood. The river overflowed, covering much of our land for weeks (37).

A: You are so busy, then do you have time for writing?
B: 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 (24). Thanks to my wife, she does a lot of housework, and sometimes she does research and typing for me, writes an article herself now and then (29). A: Have you had any anxious moments since you quitted your job?
B: Yes. I’m not making anywhere near as much money as I did when I was employed full time (60). For various stories of mine (55), I have been to some dangerous areas. We’ve been able to make up the difference in income by cutting back without appreciably lowering our standard of living (71). But on balance things have gone much better than we had any right to expect (54). A: Now many people living in towns have a romantic idea of life in the countryside. They dream of starting up their own farm, of living off the land. From your experience, what qualities does it take to live such a life?
B: The life of a farmer is far from easy. 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, and the other requirement is energy --- a lot of it, because almost everything here must be done by yourself. A: How much longer are you going to stay on here?
B: No one knows. Perhaps for quite a while, perhaps not. Whenever the time comes, we’ll leave with a sense of pride at what we’ve been able to accomplish. It is here that we’ve found just what we were looking for.