In Minecraft, you can now build massive factories to obtain thousands of resources from various items and blocks. But what if you want to be more space-efficient? There are great solutions for that! Designing a farm as compact as possible while still achieving a large output is a small art in itself. Micro farms are incredibly popular for this reason 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 a few articles about farms for wheat, potatoes, or carrots. These work with a water system or with villagers who automatically tend the farm. But with some bone meal in hand, you can also build your own small micro farm for all crops.
Setup: Place water in the ground and till the field in front of it with the crop of your choice. Above the water, as well as to the left and right of the farmland, place three dispensers filled with bone meal. On the dispenser above the water source, place an observer facing up. Attach a piston to it. Fill the rest of the farm with building blocks, except for one of the back bottom corners. Also, connect all blocks with Redstone on top. Place a lever at the front of the farm and a step in front of the farmland.
Functionality: When you flip the lever twice, the piston moves back and forth. You need to replant the field in the gap, and then 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, for example. 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. Add water to the hopper at the slab below.
Functionality: Multiply 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 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 and 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 and four hoppers around it. On the hoppers, place mud blocks, and in the middle, above the chest, a water source. Build a 3-block high tower above it. Fill the free corners with two building blocks, then place a piston above them and an observer on top, 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 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! The block can be found in the ocean, but a small, automatic farm is also incredibly practical. You can dry kelp in a furnace and either eat the dried kelp or turn 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 works similarly 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 behind it. Build a kind of drain on top with a glass block, then 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 to the top glass block of the tube and plant kelp at the bottom.
Functionality: This farm also works completely automatically and can just 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 Berries Farm: Decoration & Food in a Compact Solution
Lastly, let’s look at glow berries, a really beautiful block that can make your world not only greener but also brighter! You can also eat or compost them, depending on what you plan to do. They are particularly good for decorating 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 presented. However, the setup is a bit different, with a chest and a hopper as the base. The dispenser with bone meal faces the free block above the hopper, and an observer facing down is placed above it. Lay some Redstone between the observer and a full block above the dispenser. Surround the farm on the left and right with blocks and at the front with a slab over the chest.
Functionality: Attach a glow berry to the observer, creating a vine. Since the bone meal is activated, you just need to hold your right-click on the glow berry, and they will collect in the chest above.
Conclusion
If you don’t want to spend too much time on large farms, sometimes smaller versions are enough to supply you with sufficient resources. Here, you can take advantage of some clever Redstone mechanisms and perhaps even 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 are, of course, expandable, depending on how many resources you need in the end.
