It seems like it was both. I have framed houses and I have shingled roofs. The former is physically demanding. The latter is back breaking. Some excerpts from

It seems like it was both. I have framed houses and I have shingled roofs. The former is physically demanding. The latter is back breaking. Some excerpts from Caro: > the farm filth had to be scrubbed out in hours of kneeling over rough rub-boards, hours in which the lye in homemade soap burned the skin off women’s hands > the heavy flatirons had to be continually carried back and forth to the stove for reheating, and the stove had to be continually fed with new supplies of wood—decades later, even strong, sturdy farm wives would remember how their backs had ached on washday.