Water is life in an acequia culture, and the irrigation ditch that runs through the village is the probably the most important feature. Every year in March, villagers who own irrigated land gather together to clear the irrigation ditch. The amount of ditch workers you must provide is dictated by the number of irrigated acres you own, and the person who oversees the whole process is the major domo (ditch boss). The ditch is cleared by hand using no motorized machinary and afterwards there is usually a celebration with food and drink.
My ditch project in Second Life was mainly to move the ditch closer to the long lots to illustrate more realistically how it is ised to irrigate the crops. I made a new height map in order to smooth the slope from Terrace Level 2 down to the fields in Terrace Level 1, and drew in the ditch around the village. After uploading it into Second Life, I realized that I needed to fine-tune the location of it to pull it even closer to the long lots using the terrain tool. It took me a while to get used to how the terrain tools work. There is a fine line between working for needless hours because you haven't set the size and the strength of the tool appropriately and just completely over-doing it by setting them too high. And even once I got the idea, it was still pretty slow work and not very accurate.
I eventually got the ditch closer to the lots, but I still haven't achieved the burmed look I was aiming for. For now, what I have works, but I have a feeling I will eventually go back in and try to rework it somehow. Eventually, I would like to have a working animation of the water gates and the irrigation of the fields.
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