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I have a multifarm. This is a picture of the boiler.

In theory, it is supposed to be self-sustaining. The powered furnace turns the wood into charcoal and feeds it into the boiler. The boiler makes steam and feeds power to the tesseract and the multifarm. What annoys me is that it needs a constant supply of dirt to turn into Humus. Can I configure it so that it uses normal dirt instead of Humus?

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make sure your multifarm isn't kosher? ... sorry bad joke :P –  z ' Mar 19 '13 at 20:33
I wonder if I can use the old farms. –  Jeffrey Lin Mar 20 '13 at 0:05
So wait, you're already supplying it with humus, which requires dirt to make. Do you just want to cut out the humus step? What's the gain there, exactly? If you don't have dirt production automated, it still won't be automated; and if you do, why isn't humus production automated too? –  SevenSidedDie Mar 20 '13 at 1:40
As of Forestry, no farm configuration in a MultiFarm requires you to produce your own humus; feed it dirt, and it will place humus. You no longer need to make any sort of humus production system with a multifarm. –  Unionhawk Mar 20 '13 at 14:42
@Unionhawk Ah, so Jeffrey just wants to stop feeding it soil of any kind. Right! I have an answer for that... –  SevenSidedDie Mar 20 '13 at 16:22

3 Answers 3

The tree farm will turn regular dirt into humus for you automatically, so you realistically only need to feed it water, power, dirt, and fertilizer to keep it running. If you run a buildcraft quarry somewhere nearby and route your stuff through with a tesseract, you can use a diamond pipe to feed dirt and fertilizer back into the farm, and pipe gates with wires to detect if the dirt/fertilizer is full. If you also have IC2 installed you can automate dirt production from plantballs, or you can use EE3 to morph the sand output back into dirt. However the sand is useful for making fertilizer from apatite, which if you have hooked up to autocrafting tables, you can set it up so you just keep one chest loaded up with dirt and apatite and you're good.

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Alternatively, you can automatically generate dirt by setting up one or more nearby wheat farms. The excess seeds feed into an autocrafting table that crafts plant balls, which then get macerated into dirt. If you have excess saplings coming out of the farm, those can go through another autocrafting table to generate more plantballs. Add wheat/seeds/dirt overflow disposal with a void pipe or a recycler, and this gives you an entirely self-sustaining farm.

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Will I need to make humus for the wheat farm? –  Jeffrey Lin Mar 20 '13 at 19:22
@jeffreylin_ Wheat only needs dirt to grow, either manual or automatic. A manual multifarm is one way to go. Another (and my preferred way) is a smart straw golem, a wood golem, and a chest hooked up your multifarm's input pipe network. –  SevenSidedDie Mar 20 '13 at 19:26
I'm currently looking into the steve's carts' farmer –  Jeffrey Lin Mar 20 '13 at 22:29
@jeffreylin_ you may also want to check out the steve's carts' woodcutter, though keep in mind, it will not work with forestry saplings (any sapling planted/harvested by a multifarm) –  Unionhawk Mar 21 '13 at 16:04
@Unionhawk I'm thinking of a deployer and woodcutter setup. –  Jeffrey Lin Mar 21 '13 at 19:40
up vote 0 down vote accepted

Nobody had everything, so I summed it up.

There are quite a few ways of getting dirt:

  • Mining it (usually with a quarry)
  • Making Plantballs and Macerating them
  • Sand and cobblestone can be turned into Dirt with a minium stone.

Alternatively, you can use Steve's Carts, which seems to be a better alternative.

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