alt Hacker NewsWomen 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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bluGill • today at 2:08 AM
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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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.