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[keratacon]

So I've just started DF2010.  I've been looking around for help with the er... quirks of farming.  There's a lot of talks about alternatives to bucket brigades, but I was wondering: how do you perform a bucket brigade?

[Surray]

I think you channel out 1 square right above a small farming area so that there's basically a hole in the ground above the middle of the room.
you then designate that one square as pond using 'i' which will make your dwarves go and get water and pour it in.
as it's not a real pond the water will just drop down and disperse in the room below. once you got enough water you remove the designation and you have a nice farm.

way too much for work for my taste so I just go and dig out a huge area underground and flood a nearby pond into it.

[slothen]

yeah i just start my farm wherever i can see a pond, or I go ahead and start an above-ground one, since prickle berries and strawberry wine is good too.  Later just build a level for farming where you can easily flood it in one go from a cave.

[tieme]

I have never used a bucket brigade, I use a level operated system to flood the room at will with very little work once set up.  It might be worth a try.

I have a 7x7 room used for growing and next to it a 2x7 room used to store water for when I want to flood.  They are connected by a hallway that has a door in it.  The door is attacked to a lever so I can let water in whenever I want.  The reservoir room is connected via a hallway to a water source, leaving it blocked off by 1 square until I complete construction at which point I'll channel from above to let the water in.  The hallway leading from res room to water source has a grate so nothing can enter my fortress from there, and a door (also attacked to a lever) so that I can cut off the main water source from my system.

I've attached a diagram.  The c is where I channel when everything else is complete.  The purple hatch marks are my grate.  The green squares are doors attacked to separate levers.  The down arrows are channels onto the next level that I use to control overflow.

During normal usage, door 1 is open and door 2 is closed.  When I want to re flood my room (I have a lot of issues with dwarves not farming so I end up recreating my farms a lot and this seems to help) I just close door 1 then open 2.  The water rushes into my room and floods it.  Any excess runs off through my drainage squares to leave a quick drying farming area. 

Let me know if you want to try this and have any questions.

/e: updated picture link and modified the intro a little for clarification

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Werdna]

Due to limited and distant water on my last map, I had to use this quite a bit. 

The key things:
1. designating a pond is not very straightforward, it starts off as a pit.  i-p-P-f is the sequence you want I think.  You have to do it a z-level over the area you want to fill.
2. a pond activity zone will only activate one dwarf!  That's gonna fill it really slowly if the water source is far away; I had problems with evaporation.
3. so to get a true bucket brigade, you need to designate several small individual pond activity zones, and you'll need a free bucket and free dwarf for each.  I put them over the four corners of the farm plot, so the water spreads evenly.
4.  Once the entire plot contains either 1/7 water or mud, get rid of the zones and build the farm plot.

Dwarves seem to use the nearest water source, which includes wells.  So be aware you may be draining a cistern if you have limited water.

[Neowulf]

One problem I've had is if you disable the zone as a pond or remove the zone entirely while someone is hauling a bucket, the bucket becomes unusable. Can't dump, can't claim, toggling either/both doesn't work, channeling out the area below causing it to fall does nothing. Really annoying, so I just tap either a nearby pool or my moat so I get the choice of either losing multiple wood buckets or 1-2 trash stones.

[JamPet]

+++++++++
+===+===+     One z-level above the farm plots
+===+===+
+++++++++

+++++++++
+FFF+FFF+      Farm Plots
+FFF+FFF+
+++++++++

This is my setup, +s are floors, and =s are open spaces.  Basically just set up a pond in the six open space tiles (i-p-P-f, as Werdna said) and watch it.  When a dwarf drops a bucket of water down, delete just that tile of activity zone.  This tells the dwarves to move on to the other spots in order.  This is very water efficient, just 1/7 a tile of water per tile of farmland, about as efficient as it is possible to be!  The 1/7 covering of water creates a dusting of mud that lasts for eternity as far as I'm aware.  So you do it and you're done, go get plantin'!  It also leaves unnecessary open pits scattered around my fortresses which I enjoy very much.  Dangerous drops with no safety railings are very dwarfy, imo.

The water conservation and the holes in the ground are the two primary reasons why I always use this particular setup.

[Fluff]

One problem I've had is if you disable the zone as a pond or remove the zone entirely while someone is hauling a bucket, the bucket becomes unusable. Can't dump, can't claim, toggling either/both doesn't work, channeling out the area below causing it to fall does nothing. Really annoying, so I just tap either a nearby pool or my moat so I get the choice of either losing multiple wood buckets or 1-2 trash stones.

The problem is that the bucket stays full of water, and water has no true place in the stockpiles of a fortress. You could always try evaporating the water with fire or magma, but that has the defect of destroying the bucket too.

You can still dump buckets of water by the way. Still useless, but more tidy.

[Lord Darkstar]

Just build a set of stairs outside (or a simple z+1 platform) and designate a "pond zone". Create a warren for it, and assign just 1 hauler to it. Set everyone else to your general "Fortress" warren alert level (you do have an "inside" equivelant warren, don't you?), (optional step) forbid all the unstuck buckets, and then make the pond active. He should grab the buckets with water in them, and dump them. As soon as he has, deactive the zone, and let him drop the empty bucket. Forbid that bucket, and repeat until all your buckets are unstuck and forbidden. Then unassign the hauler from that warren, unforbid all your forbidden buckets, and de-alert your civs. Good luck!