Minecraft

Penny Ranch

Payton Creager, Katie Miller, & Jacob Wilson, 7th grade

Drakes Creek Middle School

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Welcome to Penny Ranch! We built this farm ranch to feed our family. To earn money, we often set up and sell potatoes, wheat, eggs, honey, honeycombs, and strawberries at the local farmers market. Our farm is set in the 1970’s because we wanted to imagine life on a farm during that time period. We wanted a homestyle feel rather than an industrial feel.

Around the Farm

The Penny Ranch is a busy place! On a quick glance, visitors will see the house, tree swings, apple trees, a pond, a well, a silo, and of course, fields of food growing.

The House: The house was built when the Pennys decided to move to the country. They wanted to have a quiet farm life away from the bustling city. The house has decorations unique to the time period they lived in including barrel lamps, avocado green beds, and brown rugs.

Our house has a cellar and a shed. The cellar is where our family pickles and stores food, and sometimes they make strawberry wine for the family. Even though it would not be economical for an industrial business it is good for a family farm! The shed's purpose is to hold wash tubs and furnaces.

So the farm would feel more realistic, we added swings to our trees! We wanted to give a vibe that children live here and enjoy their life on the farm.

The Barn: We built the barn to house our cows, sheep, and pig. We also store food and crops in the barn for the family.

The Greenhouses: When working on the Greenhouse, we used the Why Grow in a Greenhouse website. It shared a lot of information about what to grow in a greenhouse and explained how it will help with year round farming. We decided to build two greenhouses to house bees that will supply honey and honeycomb for the family and to sell at the farmer's market. The greenhouses also helps the family have fresh flowers in the winter and grow plants inside during cold seasons.

The Chicken Coop: We built the chicken coop to house the family’s chickens. The chickens supply the family with fresh eggs and they also sell extra eggs at the farmer’s market.

The Well: The well is used as a more affordable way of gathering water for the animals and crops. On the website, Advantages of Well Water, we learned, “Since well water is naturally filtered, it is much better on our environment than the city stuff. All those chemicals used to treat city water have to go somewhere, right? With well water, everything comes right from the earth.” Since we learned well water is good for us, we knew we wanted to include a well on the farm.

The Fields

Apple trees: One of our favorite things we built on our farm was the apple trees! To build these, we took an armour stand and put a red hat on it. Then, we put it in a tree, making it resemble an apple tree. To help build these, we looked at the Jackson’s Orchard website. Jackson's Orchard is a local orchard in our community that is family owned and family operated. We wanted to see how to they designed their apple orchard and looked at their design to inspire our apple orchard.

Strawberry Fields: On a real farm, strawberries are tricky to grow because birds like them so much. Our family loves them though so we planted them to grown. The strawberries to are to eat and turn into jelly. We also sell them at the farmer’s market.

Wheat Field: The purpose of the wheat field is to grow wheat grain that we used to sell, store for food, and to mill for flour. We built a wheat truck to haul wheat around the farm as well as to the farmer’s market. In the winter, we use the wheat truck to store wheat for our farm animals.

Potato field: The potato field was planted to be sold as a profit and to be used as food for the family. We feel potatoes are an important part of the farm because they are filling and easy to grow.

We hope you have enjoyed your tour of Penny Ranch. Come see us again soon!

Sources:

Jackson’s Orchard https://jacksonsorchard.com/news/

Advantages of Well Water: https://www.cj4water.com/news/well-water-advantages/

Why Grow in a Greenhouse? https://www.johnnyseeds.com/growers-library/vegetables/protected-culture-greenhouse-growing-basics.html