Elves probably find an excuse to spend several hours singing together every day / night / unspecified sidereal time period.
The required mundane stuff like farming and cleaning latrines. Magic, or volunteers, or wha?
The necessary work could be done while still leaving time for a lot of ease.
Haha! No there's a line there somewhere... No I think every activity is for real. The king and queen do actually hunt and gather fruit and whatever. They just don't take care of the daily supply.Just...maybe not Marie Antoinette milkmaids.
I think that we have to assume that their structure is fairly hierarchical. This would not mean that Thingol and Melian does nothing or that they don't hunt or gather wild strawberries. On the contrary, they should do these things, but in such a way that those activities are feasts in themselves. The Royal Hunt. The King's Cherry Picking. The Queen's Trout Fishing. Accompanied by a bunch of tralala-lolly elves.
I think we should remind ourselves of the issue of purpose that the elves struggled with last season during the debate about going to Valinor or not. These elves chose to go but were forced to stay. What has this done to their sense of purpose and feeling of where they belong? My guess is that most of them feel that they belong in Beleriand. It's not Valinor but it's kind of a paradise. They have been given a queen who is a Maia and a changed king. This season the Lindi will come here because they've heard rumours about Thingol and his kingdom and how wonderful it is.
Obviously, *any* plant life at all surviving from the destruction of the Lamps until the rising of the Sun is not remotely realistic. And yet we clearly have forests, etc. Yavanna's magic sustains them, moving right along.... So yes, they can have crops without sunlight, but we probably don't want to draw *too* much attention to that, as it will look absurd.