Farming

The new Doctor Who episode is this weekend. At least something good has came from having to sell my Creamfields ticket, well that and being able to pay rent. As usual, I spent all of yesterday playing minecraft, but that had something to do with not wanting to move due to the night before. I went out with Gareth, George, Baz and Ashley. It was pretty good, had a few pints at Eastgate, then went to Balestra. It was a good night, even though it was a sunday. Town was pretty dead, but that made it better, we just sat in the garden of balestra getting £1.50 pints all night. With no douchebags bothering us, music wasn't too loud. It was good. Anyway, back to minecraft, I finally finished the automated mushroom farm.

I started of by digging a 10x20 room and builing two levels of cobblestone, with a water source at the back, and a piston directly in front of the source.

I then dug an alcove in the back wall and linked a redstone torch to the pistons. I then linked another redstone torch directly below the first to a lever.

Next I dug a trench at the front end of the room, so that when the pistons retract the water flows to the edge of the cobblestone.

I then repeated the same layout for multiple layers above the original whilst planting mushrooms on each of the raised cobblestone paths. I mad sure to place the relevant redstone circuit so all pistons retracted at the same time. I also placed a water source at the edge of each side of the front trench, so that all mushrooms collected at the center.

I then replaced the lever at the back of the room with a lever at the front, via a redstone circuit under the farm. I removed all torches and closed of the room so it was completely dark, and created a ditch so that the water flows forward to a collection point.

Pulling the lever causes the pistons to retract causing all of the mushrooms on that level to flow off the edge of the cobblestone and collect in the middle, at the collection point. So far it seems to produce about 50 mushrooms every 20-30 minutes, but this can be improved by adding extra levels to the farm.

I've just begun making an automated sugar cane farm, by having pistons placed a block higher than the sugar cane, so that when activated the top two sugar cane blocks are knocked loose. These will be collected by a constantly flowing stream of water, with a collection point similar to the mushroom farm.