"quite large plots of land, that they used for growing their own vegetables, keeping chickens, possibly a pig or even a cow."
There is a great deal of utter nonsense talked and written about idyllic rural life - especially among agricultural workers
Bothy labour as comparable to Bond Slavery – you signed on with a "master" for a set period and belonged to him until your term ran out
The hiring fairs were little more than those were animals were bought and sold – you were inspected and chosen or rejected as would be a work-horse
You were then herded together and accommodated in sheds – again like animals – usually a singly living space, men at one end, women at the other, often with only a blanket dividing them
Your work was comparable with that of a slave.
The bothy system, which also extended to northern Ireland and England, lasted right into the twentieth century, it virtually ceased to exist when a horrific bothy fire in Kirkintillough, outside Glasgow, killed ten Irish potato pickers in September, 1937.
Conditions in rural Scotland were little different in the rest of Britain, with rural workers having to fortify their meagre diets with game taken from common land or produce from 'gardens', little plots on the 'commons' where a few vegetables were grown.
The seizure of the Commons by the gentry led to widespread starvation and was marked by 'The Poaching Wars' which lasted for over a century and a half (1760-1914) and led to many thousands of rural dwellers being transported to Australia for the heinous crime of trying to feed their families
Far from the rosy picture of rural existence, still being painted right into the twentieth century, life in the countryside was as brutal and unfair as it was in industrial Britain
We recorded hours of descriptions of these conditions from East Anglican singer, Walter Pardon - men forced to go to sea by hunger, whole families driven into the workhouse – one remarkable account of a relative being forced to labour from dawn to dusk and, as he had no watch, having to judge knocking-off time by looking at the sky, covering one eye and, when you could see two stars with one eye, that as time to go home.   
Some of our finest literature, often deliberately neglected, covers this life – the writings of Joseph Arch and Samuel Bamford, or Cobbett' 'Rural Rides' being among the best
The two most comprehensive are E P Thomsons 'The Making of the English Working Class and Sir Howard Newby's 'The Deferential Worker'
A far cry from Roases 'round the cottage door and big breakfasts
Jim Carroll   

This description comes from David Kerr Cameron's 'The Ballad and the Plough' a remarkable work which sets bothy ballads in their social context
THE FARMTOUN CREW
The farmtouns bred hard men, and no wonder. They were forever moated with the kind of mud that sucked the boots off you and sank farm carts (coming home with their turnip-loads) up to the axle-trees. And such discomfort apart, there was a tyranny about the great farmtouns; their men were as firmly shackled by the cry of a hungry beast or a week of fine weather as any factory hand to the punch-clock at the plant gate.
The farmtoun day began before five o'clock when the bailie (the stockman) lifted his head from the cold pillow, and dragging on his trousers as he went, made blear-eyed for the byre, where his beasts were already bellowing to be fed. Indeed, on dairytouns with a milk herd the start was even earlier, with the dairy cattle¬man awake almost before some of the single men were in their bothy beds. In the summer he was up by four while the day was new-minted, stepping out of his cottar's house into that strangely- still world before sunrise, a world weird without movement. That time of the morning was like the dawn of creation or the last days of eternity. In winter he staggered into pitch darkness, swinging a stable lantern to light his feet through the mud of the farm road. A good bailie, like a good shepherd, was a loner. While he was pushing turnips by the barrowload from an adjoining shed to silence his hungry beasts or teasing fresh bedding straw under their hooves, the horsemen of the farmtoun slept on. They had an hour of sleep left, a half-hour at least. Then it was time to rise, to feed and groom their Clydesdales. The stable was warmer, anyway, from the horses' breath and grooming the beasts gave them an appetite before going to breakfast about a quarter to six. Appetite was a necessary aperitif, for whether he was married and cottared or single and bothy-housed, breakfast, like all the other meals of the day, had a quite predictable monotony: without fail, it would be brose, an instant-mix of oatmeal and hot water that could make cold porridge seem like haute cuisine.
The farmtouns did not encourage slow eaters, conversation or bouts of introspection between courses: the men would be back in the stable before six. There the grieve would already be waiting them, to give his orders. And even the dark of a winter morning that made it impossible for the ploughmen to see the gate of the field let alone the straight of the furrow, brought them no respite. Until such time as it came daylight the men would be sent to the barn to thresh and later to the corn loft to put a few quarters of oats through the fanner—the corn-dresser. Both were hard tasks that took their toll of a man's stamina and made him anxious to see the first streaks of dawn drawn across the corn-loft's skylight window. It was time then to yoke the plough and cold though that might be, with the frosty air cutting into his lungs, the horseman preferred it. There was a satisfaction at the plough, in good work, in watching the way the mouldboard flung the ribbon of the furrow unbroken on to its back; there was the steadying dialogue with his pair: encouragement as well as cursing reproach for at times they had him dancing almost between the plough stilts, doing a ballet in the bottom of the furrow.
At eleven it was time to unyoke, to return to the farmtoun and give his Clydesdales their feed before going for his own bite, oatmeal again, in a fresh disguise.
"Denner" was no more a lingering affair than breakfast but at least, back in the stable, there was time to take a seat on one of the cornkists—the large chests in which the horses' oats were stored —fill pipes and take stock of the world's affairs, or what little was known of them, for until the wireless spread its influence in the 1930s as a social integrator, news was late and often garbled by the time it reached the outlying farmtouns. It came piecemeal by the postman, who had it from the merchant, who had time to read newspapers.
The afternoon's shift—a "yoking" it was called in the North- East's Buchan area—was from one o'clock until six or, in winter, until darkness made work in the fields impossible. Then the ploughmen might return to the farmtoun without incurring the cutting edge of the grieve's tongue to stable their Clydesdales for the night. For their beasts it was the end of the day; not for the men. If there was an hour to spare before suppertime, the grieve could be counted on to see that they were not idle. They would have another hour of the barn-mill before they finished and the grieve's watch released them.