You can't rely on spouses for anything. When they feed the animals, that is useless, since by that point in the game, you are going to have fully upgraded barns/coops (plus i think, your hay reserves go down, despite animals might not need to be fed, since they roam outdoors). When they fix fences, you can either replace them with new ones (too cheap), or activate the Golden Clock. They are decorative mostly, akin to a "trophy" of sorts and they give you items, but most importantly, interaction/conversation.
MateoOfRiverwood got you covered. I only will add Hoppers! They might not do much, but they are a slight help anyway. Slap one behind the machines of your choice (those that it can be cost-effective, not ones that take lots of in-game days/time to produce), load them terribly and just pass them by to collect, at your leisure.
We could certainly use some automation, really. I remember opening a similar thread, some time ago. Especially some of us who make extremely big and/or complex farm layouts, we run out of time, before doing less than half of the things we started to do, at the beginning of a new (in-game) day.
