Ok so I made muddy ground by accidentally breaching a pool. I turned fun into win and just converted the area into a farm.
Anyways I laid down a farm plot. The entire plot is not on muddy ground, but maybe 80% of it is. Certainly worth at least 9 or 10 tiles of farm.
I set it for plump helmets all year round, and...the farmers did nothing.
Understand I have gotten a total about about 6 farmers through immigrants, so I thought it odd that none of them were doing anything with the farm that I had designated. So I took a look at what they were doing. At the time they were moving rocks from the living level to my giant stone stockpile I built in a loam level so that I would not just dig out more stone. The stocks tell me that I have like 2000 stone already, and for a new fortress that is already far more than I need. But I digress.
Seeing that they were just hauling, I found the most competent farmer and told him to only A) Farm fields and B) Haul food and items. I figured if I set him so that his only real job was to move food and farm, he would farm.
So far he has not done anything still. I checked the ground the farm is build on and it is still muddy. I checked through my food pile stocks and I do in fact have plump helmet spawns. But the dwarf is still walking around not doing jack.
Am I supposed to wait for another season to start before they begin? Should I just re-irrigate it once I get some flowing water again (it is all frozen right now)?