The exact mode of payment is irrelevant. The point is they had to work for sustenance - whether it was trading skills for money, or producing goods and bartering them, or just producing direct necessities.
The core topic is "vacation", the concept of pleasurably not working while using reserves for sustenance. This in contrast primarily with "work" (the process of labor to create sustenance & reserves thereof), and raising the side contrast of "unemployment" (unable to produce sustenance, eating into reserves - or facing the prospect of none - in a decidedly UN-pleasurable situation).
Today we conflate "work" with "payment", as our society has become advanced enough that few indeed need produce the actual essentials of sustenance (ex.: by sitting here thinking for 8 hours, I can produce enough value to trade for a week's essentials - much more productive than simple gardening). The money (now mostly mere etherial bits, tacit agreements of trade) we earn should not obscure the fact that we're working for essential sustenance, plus surplus.
I grew up in a family which engaged in significant (though not complete) self-sufficiency. Heat? cut down trees, split logs, used wood stove. Food? grew half a year's vegetables & fruit. Clothing? made some of it, repaired much. That all wasn't "not working" just because a wage wasn't involved; it was hard work, not a vacation (and not unemployment).