Preindustrial farming involved a lot of downtime outside of the tropics. Essentially a few weeks a year involved 14+ hour days, but there simply wasn’t that much to do the rest of the year. It’s a common misconception that summer breaks where for farmers, but historically rurual areas actually had school in summer and winter with breaks in the spring and fall simply because that’s when there was a lot of work to get done.

For many in the US this meant a second occupation outside of farming, from preaching to making beer etc.