Tutorial:Ice farming

Ice farming is the process of controllably and renewably generating ice, to gather it with a Silk Touch-enchanted tool. Ice naturally occurs in snowy and cold biomes, and ice farming relies on the freezing of water from an infinite water source.

An ice farm consists of a large flat pan, open to the sky in an icy biome. Ice is only able to form if the water being frozen is horizontally adjacent to a non-water block. As a result, most ice farms should follow some basic principles:

• Have water sources that can't freeze, to replenish the water after harvesting the ice. One way to do this is with waterlogged blocks; another way is to place solid blocks above water. Light can also be used to prevent freezing, but this is not recommended.
• Place blocks throughout the farm and/or around the edge, so as many water sources as possible are next to a block. These water sources are always able to freeze; other water sources can freeze after an adjacent water source has frozen. Keep in mind that waterlogged blocks do not count; if the entire farm is surrounded by waterlogged blocks, it may be unable to freeze.
• Do not allow trees or other obstacles to overhang the farm, and keep light sources at a distance. These will prevent some water from freezing.

To harvest, stand in the ice pan, and mine ice blocks with a Silk Touch tool, taking care to not mine the dirt. The covered water source blocks will then spread to refill the farm, and you simply wade around to collect the harvested ice. Boots enchanted with Depth Strider are useful for moving through the water faster.

An ice farm can be used to craft packed ice and blue ice blocks, which can be used for ice boat highways, faster item transportation, and, in the case of blue ice, a basalt farm. They are crafted with the following crafting recipes:

A large ice farm can double as a self-resetting spleef arena. Not using Silk Touch tools creates a variant where the broken blocks might reform during play. Using Silk Touch creates a more conventional game, and also harvests the ice. In this case, the arena will not reset properly until all the ice is mined, or perhaps melted with a grid of redstone lamps. A farm used for spleef should probably cover its water sources with an unbroken protective lip rather than alternating blocks, as they might snag players otherwise.

Ice could theoretically be generated in the same way as cobblestone using two water source blocks, even to the extent that it could be piston-driven and used to build self-repairing structures. However, ice freezes slowly enough that an absurdly long clock cycle or a BUD (Block Update Detector), such as an observer, would be needed. Either way, it would serve as a very impractical toy. You can also make it high in the air to freeze the water.

• Ice
• Water
• Farming
• Renewable resources