Green Economy
Part 42 ~ 5 July 2025
Posted: 10 March 2026
This week I made my first expedition into the Lush Caves! It may seem strange that I've missed these at my stage of progression, but the truth is, I simply didn't run into any in all of the caving I've done so far. But recently, while flying over the jungle to the north of my base, I spotted some of the distinctive moss flooring in an open pit. So today, with a hunger for new adventure – and an industrial-scale appetite for bonemeal – I went down into the mossy underground.
The cave didn't look like much at first, but as I explored what appeared to be a dead end, it opened up into a bigger, lusher cave. This became a recurring theme, and I soon found out that I'd stumbled on a vast network of connected clay caverns. Naturally, I took advantage of this situation to grab everything the locale has to offer – one of each colour of axolotl (not the blue one obviously), and as much as I could find of the non-renewable small dripleaf and spore blossom. In the end the cave turned out to be too much and I ended up mining up to the surface... where I found a wandering trader waiting for me with a stock of small dripleaf. I guess he's been exploring the caves too!
I took something else from the cave that's more important than any item: memespiration. Now, I haven't watched The Big Bang Theory, but I know a good meme when I see one! This is for my fellow aro and ace folks :D
Back to Elaville for the reason why I needed to visit a lush cave. I need a bonemeal farm! Not just for my cursed storage daisies, but also for farmland crops, trees, tall flowers, mushrooms, sea pickles, and nether vegetation. I probably had some moss from a shipwreck, but (a) I couldn't find it, and (b) I wanted the adventure lol. This farm is going INSIDE the hill, which means expanding the existing cave to about 30 blocks wide, 20 deep, and 10 high. I won't need to go back to the stone generator for a while after this!
Now for the actual farm! It's another ilmango design, this time only 3 years old! Truly one of the GOATs of technical Minecraft. 💜 After a LOT of back and forth between Indigo Empire and ilmango's world download, I managed to piece this beauty together! (I do have Litematica, but I'm not keen to use it unless I ABSOLUTELY have to... it feels a bit mindless to just go around filling in the ghost blocks.) The Stackwell Curse struck again as the first two dispensers in line swallowed up all the bonemeal – and with a capacity of 14 million per dispenser + hopper, that's not gonna fly – but I was able to reroute the compost into two queues and feed every dispenser. It does mean I have to grab my loot from two of the farm dispensers instead of a convenient collection chest, but I'll gladly take it.
While I was under Elaville Hill building the farm, another wandering trader had spawned above me – this time on my statue! I flew up there to "negotiate" but he wouldn't give me anything of value, so I gave him my best Spartan impression, yelled "THIS IS ELAVILLE!" and pushed him off to his death >:D
Now that I have a lush farm in a cave, it's time to bring the lush cave to the farm! (I hope that makes sense!) I went back to the cave to collect as much clay as I could get my hands on, then reskinned my artificial cave with moss on the ceiling and clay on the floor. A few glow berries and spore blossoms for flavour, and we have our very own lush cave! Sure, the game says I'm in the savanna, but what does it know, it's just reading some temperature values :P
To complete the lushness, I released my little aquatic friends into the pond in front of the farm. They quickly got stuck on the corners of the blocks and stopped moving. Two of them somehow got out of the pond and into the nearby flooded caves, before similarly getting stuck. Ahh, the mob AI is great isn't it? -_- Whatever, they're still adorable! 💜
