Management of a Home Farm. 
259 
sign of vice. Young' horses and West Highland oxen will gene- 
rally be transferred to a run in the deer-park. 
Although the cost of maintaining roads, walks, and drives, is 
entered in a separate book, yet the work may be advantageously 
executed under the supervision of the farm-manager by men and 
horses under his charge. Both the haulage and the hand-labour 
required for this class of work are slack at the busy time of the 
agricultural year. Thus all road-repairs should be done in the ^ 
early part of winter, at least as far as the putting on of materials 
is concerned. In autumn there is the needful cleansing from 
leaves, ruts, and standing water, though the two latter should 
never have to be named when once the roads are got into good 
order. In spring, edging and cleansing have to be attended to ; 
weeding follows as a matter of course ; and then, where hay work 
is pressing, or roots require the hoe, all the hands are available for 
the farm. Edging should rarely be done oftener than twice 
a-year, and the very best hand to be got — a man with a good eye 
and a fair amount of taste — must be selected ; but unfortunately 
the system too often is to send worn-out men, or semi-pensioners, 
to the job. Now, it is very pleasant to see old and faithful 
service kindly recognised by the owners of property, and a light 
job, with full pay, is probably the easiest mode of dealing with 
it ; but at the same time the services of such men, bringing 
neither skill, experience, nor energy to the task, are probably about 
as costly a mode of keeping up roads and drives as could well 
be devised. By all means let the sweeping up, cleansing, col- 
lecting leaves, &c., be left to them, but do not place a pick or an 
edging-tool into such hands. 
For the destruction of weeds, an application of dry salt is 
the most efficient and readiest mode yet devised. A ton will 
do both sides of a drive a mile in length, and if applied in 
May, when the weather is dry, so that it has time to exert 
its full strength, little more attention to weeding will be re- 
quired till the August or September following. A half-dressing, 
in those places only where the weeds have started, will then 
keep them snug for the winter. This is quite as efficient a 
plan and much less troublesome than the more highly-finished 
mode of scalding with brine, from a Trentham engine. In either 
case there is a great advantage as compared with hand-weeding ; 
the road is not slackened, as with the hoe, but its consolidation 
and firmness is rather increased. The only point to be observed 
in sowing dry salt is to see that the adjacent herbage is not 
scorched. We have met this difficulty by sending alongside of 
the man who is sowing a boy, who drags a board, 12 feet long 
and about 18 inches deep, held in a perpendicular, or rather an 
oblique position. The same practice of applying dry salt is 
equally useful for stable-yards and paved courts. All drives 
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