9 Creative Minecraft Farms for Ideas and Inspiration

Minecraft doesn’t teach players to manage resources so much as it teaches them to hoard resources. And to be resourceful. Play on words aside, the key to surviving Minecraft and enjoying it is to gather as many resources as you can, as quickly as you can.

Now, a lot of conventional “beginner” farms would start with maybe a couple of crop sections, several trees, and a cow or two. It would also be near some sort of fishable water source.

But how about something a little more … outside the box?

If you’ve got the resources and the time, we’ve got the designs. 9, in fact! These one-of-a-kind Minecraft farm ideas are sure to make your game a lot more interesting.

Some are hyper-functional, some are purely aesthetic, and others are just straight up quirky. Enjoy!

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Table of Contents

The Survival Farm Minecraft Starter-Pack

The idea behind this farm is to create a near-endless supply of wood and crops – two very important resources that you’ll need in bulk as you start your Minecraft experience. Now, you could plant some saplings and crops in a nice, neat, organized manner and wait patiently for their yield.

But why do that when you can so easily build a practically inexhaustible supply of wood, wheat, leather, and the like?

That’s what YouTube creator Avomance teaches us to do with his 8 BEST Easy Starter Farms for Minecraft Survival video. They walk you through the process of creating farms that yield specific products quickly and efficiently using clever hacks, specific placements, and pretty minimal resources.

Seriously; you can create a near-inexhaustible supply of oak wood for yourself with just nine slabs of cobblestone, four torches, and nine oak tree saplings. Or how about an infinitely endless crop farm, where you can get wheat, carrots, potatoes, or corn by the dozens using some water dispensers, a hopper, and a barrel?

The best part is that these Minecraft farm ideas are all expandable. So you can start small – using just the bare requirements – and simply build-out. Pretty neat, right?

Minecraft’s Multilayered Platform Farm

This one’s a pretty nifty, multi-platform farm that extends vertically – not horizontally.

That’s right; it rises into the sky. Like a very distorted and very dystopian Christmas tree (that gives you the gift of Minecraft crops).

There’s one central pillar, around 15 or so blocks high (depending on your preference), and a bunch of smaller platforms of varying sizes circling around it, making their way up. You can space them evenly or you can plop them at completely random levels – again; up to you. Each platform can hold a different crop.

To make your way up and down the pillar, use a vine. A ladder works too (and would suit a more industrial or bare-bones civilization vibe) but it might not fit as well.

YouTube user Grian recommends this sort of farm if you’re going for a ruined city or a futuristic-industrial society build. We can also recommend this if you’re trying to optimize land space. It also gives you a nice, defensible high ground position that you can use to your advantage.

Check out how Grian did it here:

A Sweet & Safe Minecraft Berry Farm

This one comes from Minecraft player BlueNerd Minecraft, and it’s actually more of a hack than a farm design. But we think it works really well if you want to try building the Minecraft-ian version of a Berry Farm. The structure’s also pretty interesting if you’re going for quirky minimalist aesthetics.

Basically, choose a plot of land to plant your berries. We recommend starting small – like a six-block row. Place the starting peg of a spruce fence at the beginning of the row (besides the first block, not on top of it!). Place another spruce fence at the end of the row (again; beside the last block, not on top).

This is important: plant your berries first! Once you’ve placed the start and endpoints of your spruce fence, plant your sweet berries in that row. If done right, the spruce fence pegs should be sandwiching the sweet berries.

By placing spruce slabs on top of the spruce fence peg and building them along the top of the sweet berries row (until you connect both spruce slabs), you essentially create a sort of roof or overhead platform to house the sweet berries. Now, when harvesting the sweet berries, you won’t take any damage!

A Simple Minecraft Walled-In Farm

This design is great for players who just want a simple, straightforward farm design that isn’t too boring.

Of the Minecraft farm ideas on this list, this one is perhaps the simplest to execute. The source materials are also pretty easy to find and gather. You’ll need mostly cobblestone, stone, and stone brick. The idea is to create a walled-in farm filled with just one or two types of crops inside.

Not particularly one-of-a-kind nor is it a mass-producing crop machine, but for all intents and purposes, this farm idea is still worth noting. It’s simple, reasonably visual, and it gets the job done.

Build the walls out of slabs, stairs, and full blocks to create height variations all around. This gives it an edgier, more rustic Medieval style. Sort of a “bare-bones” civilization that’s doing well enough to get by.

Varying height and asymmetrical walls will give this farm a more lived-in and chiseled look, as opposed to a typical neat, structured, boring look.

If you want to play with the visuals a little more, you can add lanterns or flags on top of the walls to decorate them. Place little waterlogged pieces in the center so you can slip in some trapdoors, extra slabs, or even lights – like glowstones, torches, or jack-o-lanterns – in between the crops.

Watch TheMythicalSausage’s video below to see how he does it!

Automatic Minecraft Iron Farm

For Minecraft 1.16 players, YouTube user Avomance uses the latest Nether update to create another awesome, inexhaustible-resource farm that you can try yourself – this time for iron. This farm also happens to be a triple-crop farm on the side (more potatoes/carrots/wheat/etc. for you), and it requires zero redstone to make.

Yay!

Do be warned that it’s a fairly complex farm with a full laundry list of materials. You’ll need – at a minimum – 126 structural blocks of one type (like oak, spruce, and dark oak), 5 glass panes, 10 stone walls, 21 stone (cobblestone works too), 81 structural slabs (like stone brick), 2 full stacks of oak fences, 8 fence gates, 2 cobblestone stairs, and one anvil.

Just to name a few.

Trust us, though; the near-infinite iron supply will be so worth it. Check out Avomance’s video!

A Greenhouse Farm in Minecraft

This one is another Minecraft farm design idea that’s more aesthetic than practical. It’s still fully functional, though. The idea comes from Minecraft player Grian, and the concept is to simply build a glass house with plants, crops, and berries in and around it to simulate a greenhouse. The inside of the greenhouse doesn’t allow for a lot of farming, but it has loads of storage options.

If resources are a concern, you can always build a mass-production farm and tuck it below ground, beneath the greenhouse.

It’s worth noting that this farm only looks complicated. Once you break it down into sections and materials, it becomes a little less so. The shell is simply that of a regular home, built as big as you like and following whatever template you like.

Grian’s design is something of a two-story number with a pointed roof, high ceilings, and a protruding front door and foyer.

To create the greenhouse effect, simply place glass in between fences (any wood will do!) with fence gates to simulate solid glass walls. The roof is pretty much the same; wooden supports, glass blocks, and glass panes. You can get a more in-depth build explanation by watching Grian’s Minecraft video. It’s the third item he discusses!

Micro Minecraft Farms

Don’t want to spend too much time building huge, grandiose, heavily-decorated farms? Why not go the complete opposite and recreate some classic tiny home living with these Minecraft micro-farms!

The idea behind these farms is mostly about space optimization. They’re so small, you can place them literally anywhere. You can also create multiples of them for mass-production value.

How small are they?

We’re talking micro melon farms that have a 3×4 footprint, cow farms that take up no more than a 5x3x3 space, and a 6x3x5 chicken farm that automatically roasts chickens for you (never run out of food again!)

There are honestly so many ideas to be found in Mumbo Jumbo’s video. He walks us through 8 Minecraft micro-farm designs – many of which are easy to construct and fully functional, if followed correctly. Just know that the more complicated the farm design, the more likely it is that the materials needed are pretty difficult to come by, like dispensers, redstone, redstone comparators, and observers.

A Semi-Automatic Minecraft Farm for Wheat, Carrot, Potato, and Beetroot

Honestly, part of what makes Minecraft so awesome is the community. You’ve got hundreds of thousands of smart, creative, and tech-savvy cookies just sharing their Minecraft farm ideas like it’s no big deal. Honestly, so many of their design tips and game hacks make it incredibly easy for beginner players to advance quickly and painlessly.

These creators are basically giving out free copies of the crib notes and cheat sheets that they had to painstakingly write out themselves.

This “Semi-Automatic Wheat, Carrot, Potato, and Beetroot Farm” is no exception. It does exactly what its name suggests, and it does it well. With enough trapdoors, stone bricks, hoppers, and a decent supply of water, you can turn a modest 9×15 patch of land into a self-sustaining mecca of delicious, ready-to-harvest crops.

Sound good? Then go watch this video to see how BlueNerd Minecraft did it!

Automatic Minecraft Wool Farm

Finally, we’ve got one last automated farm. If you’ve utterly subscribed to Minecraft farm ideas #1 and #5 on this list, this one might tickle your fancy, too. It’s another inexhaustible mass-production setup; this time for wool.

Minecraft wool is used mostly for crafting decorations and furniture like beds, carpets, banners, and paintings. If you love building houses, homes, and residential lots in Minecraft, you’ll definitely find this farm useful. After all, it yields about 500 wool per hour.

Crazy, right?

Check out Shulkercraft’s video on the best – and easiest – way to do it on Minecraft 1.16 and 1.15. You’ll need quite a bit of source material for it, and they’re not the ones that are quickly obtained. We’re talking redstone dust, hoppers, dispensers, observers, and shears by the handful. But if you can source all of what you need (it’s listed in the video, don’t worry), you’ll have a clean, mean, wool-popping (farm) machine in no time!