No, as they mentioned it separately from the house, they were quite clearly talking about making the land itself unusable. In a more-or-less permanent way.
Well, seeing as I don’t have access to a plow or the amount of salt it would take to make an acre unusable it certainly was not literally. Not to mention I don’t understand (though I did some research because of this thread) how long salting would actually prevent crops from growing since its seems the salt would be removed by water in just a couple of years.
I meant it more along the way of the previous comment about destroying the sewer systems too. I would certainly try and make the place as inhospitable as possible and let the people taking it from me spend their effort to replicate everything I did but harder.
You are Leopold Ii, and I claim my £5.