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If you consider "farming" just working on the field.. then yes, they didn't do much work on the field itself. But there was a lot of other work to be done, from
by ajsnigrutin 5y ago
If you consider "farming" just working on the field.. then yes, they didn't do much work on the field itself. But there was a lot of other work to be done, from tending the animals, fixing/repairing farm equipment, making more profitable items (cheese instead of milk), making cloth, candles, etc.
Saying they only work a few weeks, is like taking someones code, counting the characters, measuring their typing speed and dividing the number to say that an average coder only works 5-15 minutes per day.
- Retric 5y agoCandles where expensive, manufacturing them may have been part of a farmers income but only the relatively wealthy could afford to use them regularly. Similar to say honey. Also to clarify they definitely worked more than a few weeks a year, but rather the absolute limit on how much you could get done during planting and harvesting limited how much you needed to work the rest of the year. Maintaining extra fencing is as pointless as having 3 plows if you can only use 1. Starting a new farm is an extraordinary amount of work, but when people have been farming the same area for generations there is only so much to do.