I mean the reality was that the time "off" was spent farming their own land, taking care of animals, fixing the house and doing the insane number of household tasks that come with premodern living. Spend a few days just cooking in a medieval style, and you'll quickly realize it's a LOT of work.
Plenty of places you can do this. Put "homesteading" into a search engine of your choice and you'll get more information on the topic than you can handle.
You'll also pretty quickly realize its a very hard, tedious life and we have it pretty good in many ways in the modern world.
So you think in order for people to not work their lives away we would have to take up subsistence farming? With all the tech and machines we have the only viable way to not be a company man is to give away all of the luxuries we currently have?
That's not remotely close to what I think the world SHOULD BE like.
It is, unfortunately, what I think the world IS like.
I'm also pointing out that if you want that aspect of the middle ages, you can have it right now by also taking all the crappy aspects of the middle ages..