They didn’t get paid, most people were subsistence farmers meaning they supported themselves through their own farming. Under feudalism they didn’t own their land, they technically rented it from the liege. To pay their rent they were obligated to work on the liege’s land part of the time. These church “holidays” (generally saint’s days) were just days they weren’t obligated to work on the liege’s land. This by no means meant they had that time off. They still had to work on their own land and do all of the endless chores life back then entailed such as making and repairing cloth, building and repairing buildings, animal care and slaughter, preserving food, etc, etc. It was 24/7. If you got injured you couldn’t just sit and recover for long because the family depended on everyone’s labor. There were constant peasant rebellions too which indicate that life among them wasn’t a casual, happy one.
They made some money on the side, mainly from selling any excess they were able to produce from their own land. Many of the famous national dishes of Europe are peasant dishes from having to make the less desirable meats more palatable while the best cuts were sold to the wealthy for hard currency. The possibility of starvation in years of bad crops was always a possibility.
They didn’t get paid, most people were subsistence farmers meaning they supported themselves through their own farming. Under feudalism they didn’t own their land, they technically rented it from the liege. To pay their rent they were obligated to work on the liege’s land part of the time. These church “holidays” (generally saint’s days) were just days they weren’t obligated to work on the liege’s land. This by no means meant they had that time off. They still had to work on their own land and do all of the endless chores life back then entailed such as making and repairing cloth, building and repairing buildings, animal care and slaughter, preserving food, etc, etc. It was 24/7. If you got injured you couldn’t just sit and recover for long because the family depended on everyone’s labor. There were constant peasant rebellions too which indicate that life among them wasn’t a casual, happy one.
They made some money on the side, mainly from selling any excess they were able to produce from their own land. Many of the famous national dishes of Europe are peasant dishes from having to make the less desirable meats more palatable while the best cuts were sold to the wealthy for hard currency. The possibility of starvation in years of bad crops was always a possibility.