Yeah, that was already mentioned by other posters. But if you mention the livestock, it’s a neat point to remind that peasants, both medieval and later ones literally lived with their animals especially in winter. In the same room. Chickens, sheep, goats, cows, pigs. And those weren’t your average cute pygmy piglets people keep as pets, pigs were more like wild hogs and there is terribly long list of known cases where pigs assaulted humans and even killed and and devoured weak people and children. Anyone still want to go back to the bucolic medieval life?

In the field yes, but in and around house there was plenty of work. For example abovementioned threshing was often done in the winter, it was hellish work which took a lot of time up to even the next harvest. Also, what people often forget is that before the agricultural and industrial revolution technic and knowledge wasn’t locked. XVIII and XIX century peasants, depite seemingly living in very similar conditions than their XII century ancestors still had better tools and more knowledge. They did had on average more hands but less land though, that was “recompensed” by serfdom and exploiting peasants from unpaid work.
Medieval peasant would simply be unable to work extra, that’s why serfdom started to appear on wider scale in XV and XVI century after reneissance pushed knowledge forward and population completely recovered after Black Death - it was also beginning of rural capitalism formation, when commodity food production was increasing and of course solution was to squeeze peasant for more unpaid labour (for example, late XVI century Polish landowner could get up to 20 times more money from unpaid labour of peasants on his land than by taxing the same peasants from the same land).

Your mother is made of stronger stuff than I am. I have no issues admitting this.

But we also shouldn’t just accept living off the crumbs the elite sweep off their tables. All of us, your mother definitely included, deserve better than that.