Question 1: I need to get some water onto an area in my fortress to start a farm, but I can't seem to get my dwarves to use the buckets I made to gather the water, and then use it on the area I need it. Can anyone tell me how to make them do this?
You need to use zones (i).
Zone an area around a water source: i, [enter] to start designating an area, [enter] to finish. If it's a lake then you want to zone the bordering land above it, not the water tiles themselves.
Then make it a water source: press [w] on that zone screen. The option will enable.
Make sure it's safe (no carp, etc, not a rushing river which floods regularly).
Now dig out a farm area. On the z-level above, dig out the same size area, and channel through [d][h] so that you have some holes to the farm area. This is where your bucket brigade will put the water. Create more zones over each hole using the same method as before, but instead of making them water sources they need to be [p] pits.
Press [shift+p] when you are on the zone menu (i, and cursor over your pits), and you'll get a list of animals (if there are any). Ignore that, but press [f] and at the bottom it should say 'Is Pond (not full)'. [space] to back out of those menus.
Now you should see dwarves go to the water source and begin tipping water through the holes, filling the area below (you will need a fair amount of water if the farm area is very large). You can [k] look to see if the farm squares are muddy, so you can build a farm. It's best if you wait until you can build one single large farm, so that only one building operation needs to take place (also I believe this helps when jobs are created to plant and gather crops).
Make sure you stop the bucket brigade when you have muddy tiles, or you will drown your farmers!