Depending on the countries, according to the productions for which they were intended, the farms have adopted over the centuries a functional configuration allowing a life in autarky with the use of small rivers or wind turbines for the energy necessary to draw water.

In Europe and Asia, some farms were fortified or even surrounded by a water ditch.

Before the water supply, the farm was often adjacent to a river, a pond or, in clayey areas, to one or more ponds (sometimes resulting from the hole dug to extract the earth that had been used to build the raw earth walls or to produce cob).