A rooster crows in Brooklyn...

and gets slaughtered and ate.

Here's an example of slop journalism that turns the tummy. You pay an urbanite to grow and eat locally what he produces.

It's a laff piece essentially, and of course, you get the requisite lesson-learned! ending:

Financially the farm was perhaps unsustainable. The costs rose to $11,000 -- or more than $120 per meal for the month.

But now his family has a greater appreciation for the business of food and the people who grow it, he said. And the toil made the food rewarding to eat, even if his kids didn't eat everything he grew.

"I don't know if anyone else liked the chickens I ate, but I just loved them," he said.

Yeah, just try buying free-range then, buddy. What turns me off to these pieces is the presentation. Either it's a joke from the start (the 4-year-old is telling you which birds to ... harvest?) or it's not.

But readers walk away with the impression that nobody can pursue this particular course of self sufficiency without being ... reduced or bumblef*ck somewhat. Not true.

It was hard on his family, too. His two kids grew bored with him because he rarely left the farm. His wife grew distant, even more so after seeing the carnage left by a rabbit that had panicked and killed her newborns.*

Howard said she only began to see his side of things after she banged her head in a dark corner of their basement on a slaughtered Flemish Giant rabbit.

"She asked me if she had hit her head on a dead chicken. When I told her it was a 20 pound (9 kg) freshly-skinned rabbit, I broke down and wept," he said. "I think that's when she realized I wasn't getting off on all the blood and gore, and it was beginning to wear me down." **

It's the same objection I have to the publishing industry. Too limited. Too stereotype. Is working-class alcoholic memoir a genre these days? Do you have to make a deal with the devil, like the rurals who "get out" and establish credentials, to portray a former lifestyle in the cheap comedy vein? No thanks. I'd like to see the book on the black professional who walked away from the corporate world not out of failure, but out of pursuit of a more positive lifestyle. (Not chicken-tending either.) I'd like to see the not-romantic, but not-victimized stories of non-urban/non-suburban youth. I'd like to read about communities out there -- small All-American towns that do still exist, where the spirit is still alive and adapting to new faces and technologies. You know, in a positive way.

Betcha the magazine knew in paying for the piece what take on the results they'd be getting.

The costs rose to $11,000 -- or more than $120 per meal for the month.

Even in Brooklyn... Oy!
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*Often it's not the animal, but the owner's care at fault for unnatural illness or behavior. From previously in the article:

Howard wanted to use duck fat for cooking, but ran into a problem. "You can kill chickens, but don't kill any ducks," his 4-year-old daughter told him. He compromised on olive oil.

The ducks were the only lucky ones. He learned how to kill and pluck roosters -- several got their heads chopped off after neighbors complaints about the crowing. And some of the rabbits died from maggot infestations.

** And in my re-read: would you believe I thought it was the wife breaking down and crying after hitting her head that made him second think his great experiment? No. It was him; he was referring to himself, not her, here! omg You big dummy, leave a rabbit hanging where someone could hit their head on it... she should be crying to you! I don't think many rural men who stay are raised that inconsiderate for others like that, or so self absorbed to find a self-pity rather than embarrassment message in the rabbit-hanging lesson. Pride in your work, respect for the feminine sex and all.