I worked the fields throughout my teen years.
It’s respectable work and it makes you appreciate both rest and a better job.
100% you are correct, when I was about 14, I went to work in the fields, where I grew up watermelons were the biggest crop, end of May thru June, all the kids my age picked watermelons, once that wrapped up we cropped tobacco and finished out the summer bailing hay, not the big round bales you see now but the much smaller rectangular bales that you stacked up in a barn.
“I worked the fields throughout my teen years.”
I was in the barn stacking hay and later on a horse taking Yankees on 2 hour trail rides. Nice tourist girls on the trail rides.