Interesting question!
Most of the examples that I can remember of nobles investing in their estates are things like draining fenland to create more arable land, building mills to turn grain into flour (thus, climbing the value-added ladder), or building weirs and the like to shape trade. These improvements are more akin to investments to fixed plant or capital goods than investments in the productivity of the labor force.
That’s not to say that lords wouldn’t buy livestock or plows or the like, but they’d usually buy them for their own lands, as those kinds of moveable goods were considered individual property. Indeed, in many cases peasants were required to bring their own plows on those days when they had to perform labor on the lord’s land as part of their feudal service.
My understanding is that there was a lively debt and credit based economy between the peasantry and artisan classes in order for them all to acquire tools and implements helpful to their respective trades. Not barter per se, more like getting stuff advanced to you on credit.
Like… take Ser Bonifer Hasty promising Clegane’s men hides of land. Most of them didn’t have much personal wealth at all, and so could not outfit a farm or whatever on their own, but “I have a strong back and I have full rights to the productive income of this hide of land” is the sort of thing that could perhaps get them a plowhorse and various farming implements (or forestry implements, or whatever the land is good for) on credit from enterprising tradesmen who are willing to take the risk.
There is some moneylending and the like, certainly, although that’s a separate issue from credit relations between lord and peasant.
As for Clegane’s men, they might try their hand at running their own quite large farms, but more likely they would rent out that land to the actual farmers and live off the rent instead.
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