I don’t deny that the labour is physically harder, I’ve worked in my life retail, office and landscaping, I know that physical labour is tough. Though hard overall is subjective, I undoubtedly hated and found most every other job harder than my stint of about a year in landscaping, which was physically very taxing. The landscaping gig might have been the favorite job I’ve ever had.

But, no, I am not talking about people who work as farmers / labourers commercially, but instead the question is mostly about self sustained homestead / village living.

Growing uo I had small scale farmers in my family and had a countryside house where I knew a lot of the beighbours who lived there full time. Generally they seemed to have a couple of bursts of work during a day but most of the day was slowly and steadily attending to one or another chore / upkeep task

I would vager people living this way actually work far less hours in a given year than a person living a modern capitalist life, especially if you factor upkeep you have to do for your house after work etc, even if we assume a 40 hour work week, which lets face it, the average person probably exceeds (64 hours for me, personally).