Women and children very much participate in farming back then, harvest was a “all hands on deck” situation.

Similarly by adding ‘and clothe bodies’ that captures well over half of a typical woman’s labor back then. Drop spindles sucked up an enormous amount of labor before you even had cloth.

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eapressoandcats 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Bret Deveraux linked to estimates that 70% of producing clothes is spinning, 20% is weaving, and 10% is sewing.

We tend to think of weaving as the time consuming thing but that’s because the spinning wheel had been around for a while by the time the Industrial Revolution happened.

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bluGill 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

At times it was all hands on deck for harvest - but most of the time it wasn't and that rest is an important part of village life missing. As you say, drop spindles suck.

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ab5tract 6 hours ago | parent [-]

If you aren’t reaping of sowing, your labor isn’t in the fields anyway.

People don’t understand that there are ebbs and flows to a farming life. There is always work to do but no one is out in the fields much unless it’s harvest or seeding times.

	▲	bluGill 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Many crops are not hands off. wheat chokes out weeds, but you need to weed the garden. You need to water crops in a drough - if you could get water (from a well or river). rice needs a lot of labor to manage water levels