In Minecraft, you can now build huge factories to obtain thousands of resources from various items and blocks. But what if you want to save some space? Fortunately, there are great solutions for that! Designing a farm to be as compact as possible while still achieving a large output is almost an art form. Micro-farms are incredibly popular for this reason and save you a lot of building materials. They also serve as a good introduction to Redstone mechanics and provide you with the necessary means to survive. Today, we’ll take a closer look at some of the best micro-farms!
Efficient Crop Farm with Redstone
We’ve written several articles on farms for wheat, potatoes, or carrots. These work with a water system or villagers who automatically tend the farm. But with a bit of bonemeal in hand, you can also build your own little micro-farm for all crops.
Setup: Place water in the ground and plant the crop of your choice in the field in front of it. Above the water, as well as to the left and right of the farmland, place three dispensers filled with enough bonemeal. On the dispenser above the water source, place an observer pointing upwards. Attach a piston to it. Fill the rest of the farm with building blocks, except for one of the lower back corners. Connect all the blocks with Redstone on top. Place a lever on the front of the farm and a step in front of the farmland.
Functionality: When you toggle the lever twice, the piston moves back and forth. You need to replant the field in the gap, and you can gather hundreds of crops in seconds!
Compact Cow Farm with Entity Cramming for Leather and Meat
Cows are not only important for meat but also have valuable leather, which you can use for books or armour. Therefore, such a compact farm is really practical! It uses the principle of “entity cramming”, as Minecraft can only allow a certain number of animals (24) on one block. If this number is exceeded, the mob dies automatically.
Setup: Use a chest with a hopper, and build a 2-block high wall around the hopper. Use a slab over the chest to access it. Lure cows into the hole and place a fence above it to prevent them from escaping. Add water to the hopper at the slab level.
Functionality: Breed the cows with wheat until they die from “entity cramming”. You can repeat this process indefinitely as long as you have wheat. Our first micro-farm is handy for this!
Sugar Cane & Bamboo Farm: Compact and Fully Automatic
Bamboo and sugar cane can be automatically harvested with a similar farm design. A compact farm is excellent for saving space while still obtaining many of these blocks. You can use both resources separately or combine them in one farm. Both items are also great for composting!
Setup: Place a chest in the middle with four hoppers around it. On the hoppers, place a mud block each and a water source over the chest. Build a 3-block high tower above it. Fill the free corners with two building blocks, place a piston above them, and an observer on top, both pointing towards the mud block. Behind the piston, place a full block with Redstone on it. Plant sugar cane and bamboo as desired and close the open gaps with glass.
Functionality: The farm works completely automatically, so you don’t have to do anything manually!
Automatic Micro-Farm for Kelp: Simple & Efficient
You can do surprisingly much with kelp! It can be found in the sea, but a small, automatic farm is also extremely practical. You can dry kelp in a furnace and eat the dried kelp or convert it into a dried kelp block. This is a particularly flammable material for a furnace or can be composted.
Setup: The principle of the micro-farm is similar to the previous example, except that kelp grows in water. Build a 4-block high glass box and integrate on one side the setup with a piston, an observer, and a block with Redstone on it. At the top, build a sort of outlet with a glass block, then a hopper into a chest. Place an open fence gate on the hopper and surround it with more glass blocks. Finally, add a water source at the top glass block of the tube and plant kelp at the bottom.
Functionality: This farm also operates automatically and can run in the background. Thanks to the water lift, the kelp is directed into the chest. You can expand it with a furnace, perhaps even with an auto-crafter for full and dried kelp blocks.
Glow Berry Farm: Decoration & Food in a Compact Solution
Finally, let’s look at glow berries, a truly beautiful block that can make your world not only greener but also brighter! You can eat them or compost them, depending on your plans. They are especially good for decorating and can be found in lush caves.
Setup: This micro-farm also relies on a dispenser and bonemeal, like the first farm we introduced. The setup, however, is a bit different, with a chest and a hopper as the base. The dispenser filled with bonemeal points towards the free block above the hopper, and a downward-facing observer is placed above. Then lay some Redstone on top between the observer and a full block over the dispenser. Surround the farm with blocks on the left and right and with a slab over the chest at the front.
Functionality: Attach a glow berry to the observer, creating a vine. As the bonemeal is activated, you need only hold your right-click on the glow berry, and they will accumulate in the chest above.
Conclusion
If you don’t want to spend a lot of time on large farms, sometimes smaller versions are enough to supply you with plenty of resources. Here, you can take advantage of some clever Redstone mechanisms and perhaps learn something new! Rent your own Minecraft server here and build some of these micro-farms on the server so all your friends can benefit! Most farms can, of course, be expanded as needed, depending on how many resources you ultimately require.
