Mardi Jo's marriage fell apart and she, staying in their family home, tried to carry on as best she could raising three boys and maintaining her acreage. Mardi had always wanted to live in the country and have horses and she and her husband had purchased the acreage with its hundred-year-old house and a barn and some pastureland. Mardi had also purchased two horses and installed them in the barn and put electrified fencing around the pasture for them. But then her marriage ended.
She stayed on the acreage with the kids and had to keep up the mortgage and take care of the place, the kids, the horses and herself on her now very limited funds. She had some income as a writer but it wasn't enough as became quite apparent when winter arrived and she couldn't afford to heat the house and had to rely upon the big old fireplace for heat. Due to lack of foresight and poor planning she had failed to acquire adequate firewood before winter. She had trees on her acreage but no chain saw so she and the boys had to gather limbs small enough to cut with an ax and scrounge for wood along roadsides.
After that first cold winter on her own, scrimping and saving and making due, the next summer she planted a large garden and bought a feeder pig which was later butchered and the meat stored in her freezer. But then there was a power failure and when the electric came back on, the power surge burned out the motor on the freezer and Mardi failed to check on the freezer periodically to see if it was OK. She didn't realize something was wrong until the meat began to stink up the whole house.
But somehow, despite her many goofs, she still managed to keep her sons clothed and fed and she also managed to hang on to the acreage despite the divorce. And at the end she marries the man who was doing some improvements to her house. Who, coincidentally, was granted his divorce on the same day as hers. Uh huh.
This was a pretty good story. I just have my doubts about how truthful it really is, which kind of spoils it for me.
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