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[dakenho]

So I started my fortress and dug out a farming room, I than flooded said room with water let it drain and build 2 large farm plots (each max size).  I grow plump helmets, pig tail, cave wheat and dimple cups
All was well and have had some successful growing season.  All of a sudden my dwarfs will not plant anything.  I press “q” and view the farms and it says there are no seeds available.  I checked and the stock pile is right next to the farm and contains at least 200 plump helmet spawn.  Initially I did not think anything of this as it was cave wheat season and I had yet to mill my initial cave wheat supplies, next season was dimple cups and I had the same problem. 
(bit of background) At the time my fortress was starting to starve due to low food and an immigration wave.  I had some caged animals which I slaughtered all but enough to re-breed.  The dwarfs, starving ate the meat before I was able to cook it (though there was not enough food to go around still).  I started brewing my cave wheat and cooked as much of that as I could (although I was able to create a 100 food, that is not much for a fortress of over 50 starving dwarfs who like to eat twice a season).  At this point I was sieged by ORCs and had to lock myself in my fortress with only about 10 prepared meals and maybe 60 or so drinks (plus what was being brewed), I did not even have enough to last.  Since I did not have any dimple cup seeds I said, hey wait I can grow plump helmets this season.  Unfortunately when I tried to change what was being grown I got “no seeds available” (can’t remember the full text) 
but no option was given to change what was being grown.  In a panic and running out of food and ale fast I order the farm to be deconstructed.  Unfortunately the area went back to being non-muddy area (so I couldn’t rebuild the farms).  I re- flooded the room and quickly drained the excess water.  Although all tiles were covered in about 4/7 water no tiles became muddied.  Panicked I dug my way to the river (which is a bit of a distance way) and flooded the room to 4/7 and drained the water.  All but about 6 tile’s from one farm and most of the tiles from the other became muddied.  Frustrated and out of options (and just about every dwarf complaining of hunger).  I built the farm any ways.  Looking around for options I was looking at slaughtering all my dogs and all my live stock (which would of sucked as the dwarven caravan does not ask what my fortress needs any more).  Fortunately I noticed the eleven caravan was in the trade depot and I said to my self THANK GOD, THEY ALWAYS BRING FOOD.  I was correct, though did not like anything I had to trade (I was forced to seize all their food).  (they were angry from the trade and were going to leave any ways so I had no choice).  The elves proceeded to wait at the door for the Orcs to leave.  With every dwarf scrambling to get there mits on food my fortress lived for the time being, though with a pending elf war, goblins, and more orcs, I do not think I will last long (I do not usually start with and anvil either so no iron weapons because the darn carvan will not ask for what I need).
The questions are:
a.     What happened to my farm and why did I have such trouble getting the area muddy
b.    Why is the dwarven carvan not asking what I want from the home land (second fortress now that this is happening)

Mods:
Orc Mod

[NecroRebel]

This appears to be a bug; I've encountered it once before myself. For some inexplicable reason, the mud beneath your farm plot disappeared, making you have a farm plot on bare stone, which cannot grow anything.

As I said, this has happened to me once before, but I was not as lucky as you. My fort died out due to starvation and a fire imp, so I know of no solution to this issue. The only thing I can think of that I did was I designated the muddied area for smoothing, but I then undesignated it before any was touched by an engraver, so I don't know why that might have happened.

It is a bug, however; I've had other forts where irrigated stone remained muddied for decades on end, where that one became unmuddied after merely a season. Strange.

[dakenho]

I ordered the area to be smoothed to while some areas that have become smoothed became muddied the few that will not become muddied are smoothed, fascinating bug.  If there are not a millions posts like this could an admin please port this to bugs.

(any thoughts on the dwarven caravan not asking me what my fortress needs).

[moki]

Tiles not being muddied is very strange, possibly a bug if you really did flood and drain the room properly. Can you give any more details on how exactly you did it? I've never seen a tile stay un-muddy after being submerged in at least 1/7 of water. Mud will get removed when smoothing the floors, but smooth floors don't become mud-repellant...
As for the farms: Were the seeds forbidden? Did you accidentally disable something in the options screen (o), perhaps "dwarves haul food"?
Did you channel in in the level above the farms so that parts of them became aboveground/light? IIRC, a farm that's partially above and partially below ground can't grow anything at all (note that built floors above the hole don't do anything. Once the ground is "light" it can't be made "dark" again, ever.)

About the caravan: It's not the caravan that's asking what you need but the liason that comes with the caravan. He needs to talk to your broker (or maybe mayor). If the broker is too busy, the liason can't talk to him and will just follow him around forever. Or maybe the liason is dead... Sometimes he already arrives at your site with injuries and/or gets mauled by wildlife without you noticing. Or he accidentally got into some magma trap or other unlucke accident. Once he's dead, he's dead and there won't be a replacement.

[dakenho]

That could be likely (but two forts in a row?) (didn’t seem like he even existed on the first caravan).  ok
I built the room at the edge of the room is a stair case going up looking like this
Wwwwwwwwwwwwww
W                                         w
W                                        s
Wdwwwwwwwwwwwww

W = wall
S = stair
D = door
And one level above this is
========
www|www
wwwswww
www|www
==========
Were
“=” = water
W = wall
| = open space

The water comes down the stairs and muddies the room
I build 2 doors in the upper level were the | is.  This works the first time I flood the room and all tiles are muddied.  The second time I did this after the problem, only some of the tiles would become muddied. After this I used a similar technique (except with a  flood gate) using the river.  There were only a few tile that would not become muddied.

The seeds are not forbidden and are accessible when I rebuilt the farms I could the dwarfs re-seeded them with no modification to the any stock piled items.

[dakenho]

I am thinking I just need a new download atm decided to avoid the problem I had with smoothing the farm and start a new fortress.  The game proceeded to crash after playing for 30 min and saving.  (it’s ok really I was not doing so good, after a full season of just mining out my main room I still had not dug to the river) on that note is there an easy way to find the river (or at least what z level the river exists on?  (was currently digging a giant cross on each z level to find it)

For some reason I seem to see a pattern were dwarf fortress decays after the first world gen (and even after a few fortresses I seem to have to dl a fresh copy of df).