If your characters are inheriting the land, rather than just the tenancy of it, then they're likely Freemen. These were typically the wealthiest class of the peasantry who, at least in England at the time of Domesday Book, held on average around a virgate of land, roughly a quarter of a 'ploughland' or the pre-Conquest 'hide', and very, very approximately about some 30 acres.

From around the 8th Century, farming in Francia and England evolved from a two-field to a three-field rotation system. On a village level, agricultural land was evaluated in terms of a 'hide' pre-1066 or a 'ploughland' post-1066. The 'hide' in particular was a measure of productivity rather than discrete geographical dimensions, so could vary somewhat in size, but the two measures seem to be broadly equivalent and average out to around some 120 acres. In practical terms, these fields would be divided into acre strips, which would be allocated between members of the community. If, for ease of example, a settlement had three ploughlands of arable land (~360 acres), only two of those ploughlands would be in active use at one time; one likely for cereal crops and the other for legumes of some kind to add nitrates to the soil, while the third was left fallow. If our titular Freeman household holds 30 acres, this would manifest as them holding around 10 acres in each field, which they would work alongside their neighbours. Without the burden of service rents on any manorial land, they would likely work the land themselves, but might also hire day labourers for assistance. Non-land-holding labourers are noticeably absent from records like Domesday Book, being concerned primarily as they are with taxable land and feudal dues, but legal texts such as Alfred of Wessex' Doomboc contain a number of regulations to do with the hiring, payment and holidays of day labourers.

While the land was owned individually, it would be worked pseudo-communally. The householders would likely own their own ox or two as draught animals, but texts such as Ælfric's Colloquy, as well as laws concerning the payment of herdsmen in the Doomboc, suggest that these were kept in a communal herd and managed by nominated ploughmen and oxherds with fees and forage paid by the owners, or that at the very least it was common for members of a community to lease their oxen to their neighbours, and lease their neighbours oxen in return.