A place that sustained itself and produced useful materials/medicines etc. without anybody's "doing anything" would have been the ideal about 500 years ago in w

A place that sustained itself and produced useful materials/medicines etc. without anybody's "doing anything" would have been the ideal about 500 years ago in what is now the US. And it's a permaculture ideal more recently. There seems to be a streak of the Protestant work ethic running through this. Otherwise how could doing more work be a virtue? Well actually I thought of an answer: Lots of things that take a lot of effort are done for not much more reason than to show how much effort they take. Which in turn reflects positively (supposedly) on the person who did it, testifying to their possession of ample extra resources to do the difficult thing. But I would think that would only be truly relevant for mating purposes. Like "This guy plays guitar, whose mastery takes an intellect, skill and devotion of time and resources that would potentially be available to you and your offspring if you were to mate with him" type logic. But what does it mean in the suburban lawn belonging to a complete family?