With your Base for Protection, You'll need FOOD!

There are many kinds of food available in Minecraft. One is crops, such as wheat, which can be used to produce bread or other baked goods when added to other ingredients. Wheat can also be used to breed cows or sheep to produce meat and either leather or wool.  Leather can be used to make armor, and books used to hold Enchantments for improving weapons, armor, and tools.  Wheat seeds can be used to breed chickens which will produce meat and feathers used to make arrows. Wheat seeds are gathered by harvesting weeds (or wheat) out in the fields or from village gardens. Another crop is carrots, used for food or for breeding pigs (or getting the flying pig award). Carrots can also be used to make various magical items. Carrots are normally obtained from Zombies or from village gardens. Mushrooms are yet another food, one red mushroom combined with one brown and a wooden bowl will make mushroom soup.  Mushrooms grow many places that are dark or near dark such as swamps under trees, in caves, or in abandoned mines. Pumpkins can be used to make pies for food and are also good for making Jack-O-Lanterns which give light but are not moved by water. Sugar Cane can be used to make sugar for making foods and can also be used to make paper to produce books when combined with leather. Sugar Cane can be obtained in the wild growing next to bodies of water on either dirt or on sand. Watermelons produce food when harvested but can also be used to make magical items. Melon seeds are sometimes found in abandoned mines in the chest minecarts. There are other foods available.

So, I have found pumpkins and harvested some seeds from weeds so I can grow these two items on irrigated land. You can temporarily irrigate land with a hoe by right clicking dirt or grass. If you quickly plant seeds they will grow. A better way is to have a source of water at the same level as your dirt and no more than 4 blocks away. This dirt will remain irrigated when right clicked with a hoe so you can plant and harvest and plant again without having to re-irrigate.

This means that I will need a source of water inside my Base where I can access it without danger from mob attack. Fortunately, Water will produce an infinite amount if you place one bucket of water in each of two opposing  corners of a 2x2 square.  Then, you can take a bucket full of water out of any of the 4 corners and that corner will refill from the two adjacent corners.  If you place a bucket of water in the center square of a 9x9 area then all of that area can be irrigated by the water. I normally build long rows of crops instead of the squares so that I can put torches near the crops to cause them to grow quickly. Some people say I use too many torches or other forms of light... but I don't get mobs spawning in my Base either.

Now, all I need is an original source of water and at least one bucket to carry it to my Base.  First, since I CAN irrigate without the water, I will expand my Base to include an area for my garden and start some plants growing on temporarily irrigated dirt.

I've shown this picture before, for the iron in the corner. But this time, notice the blocks mined out to the left. I mined out an area 2x9 blocks. This will be filled in with dirt for crops. Since I only have Wheat Seeds and Pumpkins, and Wheat produces food much easier, I will plant Wheat here.

I light the area with torches to promote growth

Then I fill in the area with dirt.

I use some of the iron to make a bucket for water

I fill the bucket with water and target the far left corner of my "indoor pond" which is 2x2 blocks in size. When I add the water by right clicking the water flows from the far left corner into the rest of the pond. But, this only has 1 "source" square of water and I want to make all 4 of the spaces into sources of water.

When I bring the second bucket of water I target the lower right corner, the opposite corner from before. As soon as I deposit the water the surface of the pond will become "quiet" and not be flowing. This is because all 4 of the squares are not source squares. If you now remove water from any square it will be filled in by the two adjacent squares and once again become a source of water.

I have positioned the pond such that the water is 4 or less squares from any block of dirt. Now when I use my hoe on the dirt it will remain irrigated.

Now I plant my Wheat seeds and wait for them to grow.

I still have Pumpkins and I make them into seeds.

Pumpkins and Watermelons grow differently from other crops in that they grow in one block and place their fruit on an adjacent block. So, here I have made a source of water on the 5th block from the end (meaning there are 4 blocks on this side and 4 blocks on the far side so all will be irrigated) and I use my hoe only on one side of the dirt rows. Then plant my Pumpkin seeds on the right side where it is irrigated. The fruit of the Pumpkin plants will place on the left side.  Eventually I will add another 2 rows to the left and plant more in the far left row so that all of my pumpkins will be placed in the center 2 rows for easy harvesting with an axe.

Here is my Base so far. Garden, work area, and mob killing zone. I will go outside and lure mobs into my entryway by the door and I will run around to the side and kill them through my Attack Holes. Note: Creepers will not explode as long as you leave the Trap Doors closed! You can kill them to get gunpowder to make dynamite. Once the mobs are dead, I open the Trap Doors, step forward to collect the loot and the orbs of XP.  I will need to have high XP to produce many Enchantment books. Hopefully I can get a carrot and a potato from some zombies. If so, I will expand my garden.

Now I have two essentials for survival in Minecraft, shelter and food. It is now time to expand my Base and gather raw materials to make better weapons, tools, and some armor. Since this is also a normal Survival game, I will go out, explore and harvest wood and sugar cane. I have 2 blocks of dirt next to the water for planting sugar cane. The ceiling above those 2 blocks is 3 blocks tall to accommodate the sugar cane's height when fully grown.

After doing some other exploring, gathering, etc.. I came back and updated my garden. I added in some Sugar Cane next to the water holes and then put in Carrots for the other 6 spots of dirt in that row.. so the row now has 3 carrots, 1 sugar cane, 1 water, 1 sugar cane, and 3 carrots for a total of 9 blocks. For the other row that has sugar cane, I will use potatoes instead of carrots.

But, for now I have carrots in those places and then I have a full row of wheat and a full row of potatoes... until I get my quantity of those items built up.