256 
Management of a Home Farm. 
leave tte hen. By this means, for a small outlay, plenty of 
rearing fowls can be had, and it will answer the cottager's pur- 
pose full as well as rearing on their own behalf. In order to 
keep up and improve a pure breed, it is desirable to select, early 
in January, one cock and three hens, the best you can find, and 
place them in a separate walk : sufficient eggs for breeding pur- 
poses will thus be readily obtained. 
The supply of potatoes remains to be considered. These will 
probably be furnished from the gardens up to the beginning of 
October, and from that date till the next May field-grown produce 
will be in demand. Grow the very choicest kinds— Flukes or 
Regents — in land not over-stimulated with manure, and store 
them only when come to full maturity. Let all the smaller and 
second-rate sizes be sorted and disposed of at once, or kept for 
sale as seed in spring, that the amount sold may replace the 
outlay for a good change of seed. The best lots will be sent in, 
one or two sacks at a time, as required. 
We have spoken about not over-stimulating the potato crop. 
On this point a very successful manager of a home farm writes 
us that the only manure he has used for several years is the coal- 
ashes from the Castle, by which means crops of the choicest 
quality, free from disease, have been obtained. 
Other departments of the establishment, as well as the house 
itself, require services from the farm of one kind or another. 
The errand-horse is sometimes entered in the coach-stable's 
account, sometimes as a separate entry. The forester needs horse- 
labour, and possibly the keep of a riding-horse, both of which 
come from the farm. The former will either be charged at a 
given rate per day, or the average cost in a series of years taken 
and entered in one sum. This is the better plan where a team 
is not entirely reserved, as it does away with a multitude of 
entries, and will work well where there is any degree of harmony 
or co-operation. But if the team should be employed in timber- 
haulage and such-like work most of the year, it is best that it 
should be wholly under the forester's control, and a charge for 
keep simply be made. The same remark holds good both with 
estate-haulages for buildings and for garden purposes. A divided 
responsibility, the limits of which cannot readily be defined, 
leaves the hands too much without supervision, for the work to 
be satisfactorily done. 
The gamekeeper will call for barley, wheat, or Indian corn for 
pheasants, and possibly carrots during winter for hares. The 
park-keeper, too, has his varied wants — hay to be stacked in 
summer, of the finest and shortest growth ; swedes and beans in 
winter, to bring the herd well out in spring. And lastly, a 
jobbing-cart and " a general purpose man," of active habits, is 
