In Minecraft, you can now build enormous factories, allowing you to obtain thousands of resources from various items and blocks. But what if you want to save some space? There are great solutions for that too! Designing a farm as compact as possible while still achieving a high output is somewhat of an art. Hence, micro farms are incredibly popular and save you a lot of building materials. They are also a good introduction to Redstone mechanics and provide you with the necessary means to survive. Today, we will take a closer look at some of the best micro farms!
Efficient Crop Farm with Redstone
We’ve already written several articles about farms for wheat, potatoes, or carrots. These work with a water system or with villagers who tend to the farm automatically. However, with a bit of bone meal in hand, you can also build your own small micro farm for all kinds of crops.
Setup: Place water in the ground and plant the crop of your choice in front of it. Above the water, as well as to the left and right of the farmland, place three dispensers filled with enough bone meal. On the dispenser above the water source, place an observer facing upwards. Attach a piston to it. Fill the rest of the farm with building blocks, except for one of the rear bottom corners. Also, connect all the blocks at the top with Redstone. Place a lever at the front of the farm and a stair in front of the farmland.
Functionality: When you flip the lever twice, the piston will move back and forth. You then need to replant the field in the gap, and you can collect 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 armor. 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 over the hole so the cows can’t escape. At the bottom, near the slab, add water to the hopper.
Functionality: Breed the cows with wheat until they die due to “entity cramming”. You can repeat this process indefinitely, as long as you have wheat. Our first micro farm is practical 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 perfect 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 excellent for composting!
Setup: Place a chest in the middle with four hoppers around it. On each hopper, place a mud block, and in the center, above the chest, a water source. Build a 3-block-high tower above. Fill the free corners with two building blocks, followed by a piston and an observer, both facing the mud block. Behind the piston, place a full block with Redstone on top. Plant sugar cane and bamboo as desired and close the open gaps with glass.
Functionality: The farm operates completely automatically, so you don’t need to do anything manually!
Automatic Micro Farm for Kelp: Simple & Efficient
Kelp can be surprisingly useful! It can be found in the sea, but a small, automatic farm is also incredibly practical. You can dry kelp in a furnace and either 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 a setup with a piston, an observer, and a block with Redstone on top on one side. Build a kind of drain with a glass block at the top, followed by a hopper into a chest. On the hopper, place an open fence gate and surround it with more glass blocks. Finally, add a water source at the topmost glass block of the tube and plant kelp at the bottom.
Functionality: This farm also operates entirely automatically and can run in the background. Thanks to the water flow, the kelp is directed into the chest. You can expand it with a furnace, maybe even with an auto-crafter for full and dried kelp blocks.
Glow Berries Farm: Decoration & Food in a Compact Solution
Finally, let’s look at glow berries, a truly beautiful block that not only makes your world greener but also brighter! You can eat them or compost them, depending on what you need. They are particularly good for decoration and can be found in lush caves.
Setup: This micro farm is also based on a dispenser and bone meal, like the first farm we introduced. The setup is slightly different, with a chest and a hopper as the foundation. The dispenser with bone meal faces the free block above the hopper, and an observer looking down is placed above it. Lay some Redstone above between the observer and a full block over the dispenser. Surround the farm on the left and right with blocks and front with a slab over the chest.
Functionality: Place a glow berry on the observer to create a vine. As the bone meal is activated, you only need to hold down the right-click on the glow berry, and they will collect in the chest above.
Conclusion
If you don’t want to spend a lot of time on large farms, smaller variants are sometimes enough to supply you with sufficient resources. Here, you can take advantage of some clever Redstone mechanisms and perhaps even learn new things! 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 require in the end.
