Teach Them to Your Children and Your Grandchildren

My granddaughters’ visit to our small farm became the opportunity for them to learn physical skills they’d never learn in the city. It made me think about the other important lessons—the spiritual lessons we need to help teach them.

The next generation of gizzard skinners is on the rise. This may strike you as a ridiculous statement, but it is a thought that has come from an event that took place today with my granddaughters. Their grandfather (my husband) butchered a couple of the overpopulation of young roosters that we have in our chicken pen. The girls had never experienced this process, and they were not present when my husband decided to butcher the two roosters.

When they arrived, it was time for me to begin the process of taking the intestines and other items that we do not consume out of the chickens (commonly known as gutting) thus preparing the chickens for chilling so that these little birds could be cooked on the barbecue for the evening meal.

Learning young

This was something, at their young age, they had not experienced. I must say I was a grown woman and married before I experienced this whole butchering process. Being a “city girl,” I had never seen chickens except when we would visit family in Missouri, and I certainly had never handled a dead one.

My husband, having grown up on a farm, had experienced this all of his life. It was not uncommon for his mother to go out to the chicken pen and get a chicken and clean it for the noon day or evening meal.

When I married into this hardworking family, I learned how to do all of this—my husband had a great motto: “Well, if you can buy it, you can make it.” Thus chicken raising and butchering became a part of our life and really was the majority of the meat that we consumed.

Teaching our children

As our children grew up, they learned all about raising chickens and egg production. We don’t live on a huge farm, but we have enough ground to raise chickens for our family. So, when the chickens were big enough to be put into the freezer, our children could expect a couple of days of butchering.

My husband would take care of the part that I really don’t like—the actual kill of the bird and skinning the birds. The next step was handing the bird off to me for the “finishing touches.” This was my part of the process, and the children would help with what we called “skinning the gizzards.” There is a membrane on the gizzard that must be taken off in order for the gizzard to be eaten. This takes much too long, so having someone else doing that “gizzard skinning” process allows me to move right along with the “inside work” much faster.

So, our older children learned how to do it. Our son was rather fast at it and could almost keep up with me, chicken for chicken.

The next generation

Today, being with our granddaughters and sharing this “chicken lesson” with them just gave me a short glimpse at how you pass something along to the next generation. If this is true for something so physical as preparing chickens, how much more important is it to pass on the spiritual lessons to the next generation? Our grandchildren were very curious about the whole process of gutting chickens, and I took them through it step by step. They were very attentive and equally fast learners.

I pray that their grandfather and I can be good teachers by example for the more important spiritual examples that they will need to live by. And I pray that our grandchildren might be equally adept at learning these spiritual principles.

The scripture in Deuteronomy 4:9 became more alive to me today as I thought about the next generation of “gizzard skinners” and their future in God’s Church. “Only take heed to yourself, and diligently keep yourself, lest you forget the things your eyes have seen, and lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life. And teach them to your children and to your grandchildren.”

Vicki Willoughby has been married to a wonderful man for the past 39 years and is the mother of four great kids and grandmother of five terrific grandkids. She and her husband attend the Springdale, Arkansas, congregation of Church of God, a Worldwide Association.