Barbara rode in her buggy to the post office this morning to pick up about 80 chicks. “How cute,” said a young girl waiting in the line, listening to the peeping. “Are you going to sell their eggs?”

Barbara smiled, “well,” she said, “we’ll eat some eggs, and then we’ll eat the chickens.”

The girls’ eyes widened.

When I heard the story, I laughed, thinking of the luxurious life our two chicks have led since they came to us a few weeks ago – heat lamps, special “chick sticks,” mealworms, and life in a hand-made roost with fresh mash to eat every morning and freshwater to drink.

All-day.

They also get to range freely on our farm and go to bed when they wish. They even get to eat discarded cookie crumbs or pasta.

They’ll be no heat lamps for these chicks on Moise’s farm. In a week or so, they’ll be let outside to walk around in the sun and find their way to the big roost the boys have built.

One day, Delilah will come for everyone.

Back at the farmhouse, I asked Delilah how she slaughters the chickens, and she said, “oh, I do, it, I just chop their heads off when they are fat and ready.”

The Amish, with some twists, eat much like the American pilgrims and pioneers ate. They grow or slaughter or can almost everything they consume.

But everything else about how they eat is very different; in the Amish home, “a place at the table” has many symbols.

I’ve never been invited to dinner, but I have been present during several meals. I’ve talked to Moise, Barbara, and several other Amish people about how they eat and what their meals are like.

I’ve also poured through some of my Amish books (I have a pretty fat library now for some context about how they eat.)

The most striking thing to me about the way Moise’s family eats is that you can look out of the window and see almost everything they eat growing under your nose or making noise in the barn.

The children are told what vegetables to harvest at breakfast, what fruit to pick, what meat to butcher in the barn. Amish women do a lot of cooking, and Amish people do a lot of eating.

But in their own time-honored way.

The other thing that stands out to me is the quiet way in which they communicate with each other during meals or with outsiders like me.

There are no loud voices, no fights, no tantrums or dramas. There is never any small talk.

Instead, there is calm, dignity, and listening, and there is always the calming sensation of prayer, a feeling of spirituality. Almost everything the Amish do is shaped and based by their spirituality, including their meals.

In my life, meals were a slapdash affair, often marked by fighting, angry silence, and restlessness. None of us could hardly wait to get up. It’s fascinating for me to see  how the Amish conduct their meals.

They will shop for what they eat if they need something, but they make it a point to shop rarely for their own food.

When a place at the table is vacant due to death, marriage, sickness, the father’s traveling, or a child who has run away, space is left for them so that they won’t be forgotten.

Nobody scrambles or quarrels to grab a seat, and the seating is carefully arranged. The father sits at the right end of the table. The mother sits on his right. The girls sit next to her on the right; the boys sit on the other side, to his left.

All the children sit according to their ages before marriage.  If there is any tension in the room, I can’t see it or feel it.

I spoke with Moise and several family members about meals and food, and I came across a wonderfully helpful book called Amish Society by John A. Hostetler; thanks to him for some of these details.

Chit-chatting, gossip, or social conversation is discouraged.  The family table is important, no cell phones or computers or Ipads, no books or toys or tools or crayons.

The evening meal is democratic, not unlike a Quaker Meeting.

Everyone in the family is encouraged to speak freely, express personal likes and dislikes before the family, and encourage group participation in all decision-making.

The patriarchy is in place; the father makes the final decision, the mother next, and the older children, in that order. All carry weight to varying degrees. I’ve seen male and female children challenge Moise, but always with respect.

The Amish patriarchy is a “soft one,” and anyone can speak up and disagree. In large measure, the patriarchy ensures order and obedience because there is nothing to fight about.

There is no argument, anger, or disrespect, no conversation for its own sake, no need to fill up the silence with talk or sound.

The Amish ethos of Gelassenheit prevails – it is a calm and measured society, the ultimate Patriarch is God, and no one questions his decisions.

The Amish are humble before Him and one another.

At breakfast, the conversation is focused on work, the chores, and work that needs to be done that day, how it will be done and who should do it.

I’ve wondered why everyone doing chores seems to know in advance what they are expected to do and how it will be done. That’s because they do know in advance; little is left to chance or improvisation. They talk about it.

Moise’s family is well-organized, disciplined, and experienced. They function very much as a well-practiced team. That includes meals.

The dinner and the table are prepared by the young women in the family and overseen by their mother, who cooks much.

At breakfast, Barbara will talk about decisions that have to be made about the chickens or pigs, or cows that need milking or slaughter, or the apples that need to be picked, or the crops that must be checked for dryness or insect infestation, or harvested.

The brooder house or pig men might need cleaning; an animal might need to be slaughtered for dinner.

The women in the family almost always do the butchering (except for large cattle.).

The women have learned how to kill an animal quickly and efficiently. Yet, they show no nervousness or anxiousness about it.

“I do it,” Delilah told me, “it’s no problem.”

At noon the meal is more casual, more intimate.

The young children are apt to be in school or resting, and the older children and parents can talk more openly about the family and the work that needs doing.

For example, the family might decide to buy some equipment or add some animals or crops to the farm. The family is often scattered at lunchtime; the meals are much more informal, there are usually empty seats.

In the evening, the most formal meal, the entire family is expected to gather at the table. There is often silence at this meal, interrupted, says one Amish scholar, “by an occasional belch, a question from a child, or the bark of a dog or bellow from a cow.”

Barbara says she often shops at local supermarkets for specific needs – a vegetable they haven’t grown, or that hasn’t ripened, fresh fruit offseason, soda, cheese,   some cooking utensil, or something they might need for making the donuts, pies, cakes, or the baked goods they make and sell.

Sometimes, neighbors are paid to shop for them at discount markets.

Mostly, everything they eat is grown or killed on their own property.

They work very hard to be independent and self-sufficient. Some of the most conservative Amish have ice boxes for keeping food cool in the summer. Moses and Barbara have at least one kerosene-powered refrigeration unit.

When you’ve had 14 children, you learn to compromise.

The Amish work hard and eat accordingly; the portions of food are generous. Everyone who has had an Amish meal says the food is excellent and flavorful.

According to Hostetler and Barbara and Maddie, the standard breakfast in many Amish households, two Amish wives I know here, “may include eggs, fried scrapple or cornmeal mush, cooked cereal, and often fried potatoes. Bread, butter, and jelly or apple butter are served with every meal. ”

The standard Amish diet is rich in fats and carbohydrates – potatoes, gravy, fried foods, and pastries.

The diet often consists of traditional Amish foods – home-cured ham from their own pigs, rivel soup, meat from their cattle,  green tomato pie, and stink cheese.

The Amish diet is also heavily influenced by contemporary foods –  salads, casseroles, chow-chow, meatloaf, bologna,  even pizza.

Amish mothers and daughters are constantly rifling through recipes other Amish women have prepared, and they ravenously consume cookbooks. These recipes are traded constantly when they meet at barn raises or church or send one another through the mail.

(I’ve brought them a dozen books I found online; they devour them. I’m learning which ones they really like and use.)

Cakes, pies, and puddings are numerous at Amish meals. I should say it is unusual to see an overweight Amish person. They work too hard.

The Amish cooks are often more open to change than the church itself.

They’ve been making food to sell for five hundred years; they have a keen instinct on what people want to buy.

The Amish tradition of overcooking and oversweetening is believed to cancel out much of the natural vitamins and minerals in the food they grow and prepare.

Health foods, vitamin supplements, and food supplements are common in Amish homes now.

(It’s interesting, the Amish have more respect for science than many Americans do, but they don’t permit it to alter their core beliefs.)

Field corn is dried and browned in the oven before it is made into cornmeal. Amish cooks prefer winter wheat for making pies and pastries and spring wheat for baking bread.

And then, there is Jesus; he is never far from any Amish activity. The Old Amish – Moise’s family – still retain some of the ceremonial practices of the Reformation when their church was founded.

They often use prayer books at home or silent prayer, or Luther’s German translation of the Bible.

A mealtime, each member of the family sitting at the table repeats his memorized meditation silently.

Children, on reaching the age of puberty, are expected to say their own prayers. These prayers are memorized, and they may consist of the Lord’s Prayer or a prayer of about the same length taken from a prayer book.

One of the most common prayers is the Gebet Vof Dem Essen or the Prayer Before Meal. This is the English translation:

“O Lord God, heavenly Father, bless us and these thy gifts, which we shall accept from thy tender goodness. Give us food and drink for our souls unto life eternal, and make us partakers of thy heavenly table through Jesus Christ. Amen.

Then, the Lord’s Prayer is repeated.

The meal is over. By 8, most of the family are in bed, reading, or sleeping.