How to save the most food possible for winter?

[Orson Welles]

What is the best way to preserve and get food to last me until the end of winter, I'm afraid of picking my berries or doing other things as the food will not last. Should i just leave the berries and perishable foods on the bush/ Plot until close to winter? And what are the best ways to get food for the upcoming winter, I'm on day 10 now.

And i don't have a ice box and i'm not sure if i will be able to get a gear this summer.

[Total Mayhem]

im on day 14 a few time (died over and over) when is winter? maybe thats why i starved.

[Orson Welles]

Originally posted by Total Mayhem:

im on day 14 a few time (died over and over) when is winter? maybe thats why i starved.

Winter if very noticable, It start to snows and gets REALLY cold. It starts on day 21.

[Repomancer]

Make a few chests and fill them with live rabbits. They'll live indefinitely, so when you feel the need to feed you'll have an easy source of unspolied morsels.

A drying rack or three is nice to have, also. Jerky lasts a long time.

It helps to have your winter home near a rabbit field, get some traps set up, then make trap-checking rounds in the afternoon. Put the traps as nearly over the holes as you can get them, and you'll do fine when bait gets lean.

Spare morsels can be used to bribe pigs into killing beefalo for their meaty goodness, and with a little luck you'll soon have the spare parts to make a nice, warm beefalo hat.

Bird traps will yield morsels some of the time, and if you can get a suitably caged bird before winter sets in it's happy to convert morsels into eggs. Eggs can be cooked and eaten, or (if left to rot) used for gunpowder.

A few piles of gunpowder in the right place, and a well-timed swipe of a torch can set off a beefalocalypse that gives you beaucoup sweet meat and other useful stuff.

A morsel-fed pig is delighted to convert himself into meat after being led to a treeguard or induced to attack beefalo. Alternately, several pigs can defeat either of those enemies if you want their extra loot mixed in with your new meat-piles.

Good luck, stay warm, and above all: Don't Starve.

[J20Hawkz]

I know you have read my guide so I take it this is extra stuff you weren't sure of.

Basically during summer fill 2 chests full of live rabbits.
Try and find clockwork monsters to get gears to make an ice box. If you can't do this in your first summer never mind.
Relocate as many berry bushes further away from base to your base. And allow them to grow during the summer. Don't pick them. I think in my first summer I relocated 30 odd berry bushes close to base.
During winter you want to eat only when you really have to.
Hounds will also come so kill them and use the monster meat and 3 berries to make meatballs.
Kill a few trapped rabbits and make meatballs with one morsel and 3 berries.
Only kill a rabbit in your chest in an emergency.
I survived my first winter basically killing the odd rabbit and using berries as fillers to make meatballs.
If you have monster meat then use 1 monster meat, 2 morsel and 1 berry to save those berries.
If you run out of berries then just focus on using 1 monster meat and 3 morsel.
Basically meatballs will be your main diet for first winter.

[asmoore]

I used to dig up tons of berry bushes and try to create big farms near my camp. Since I've developed a new strategy that keeps me in more food than I can possibly eat. I end up feeding lots to pigs so I have an army of woodcutters or minions to fight any boss monsters who crop up.

While I'm exploring I keep an eye out for any swamps and make it a point to collect 8 reeds. That will give you enough papyrus to build a birdcage. Then I do my best to settle near 2-3 spider dens. Setting traps near the spider dens (and occasionally killing ALL the spiders while tearing them down when they get to Tier 3) gets me lots of monster meat. Cooked monster meat can be fed to my caged bird for eggs.

Two eggs, one monster meat, and a morsel in a crock pot yields Bacon and Eggs, which is filling and also restores a respectable amount of health and sanity. That is basically what I eat all winter.

Most of my morsels come from birds rather than rabbits but it depends on my campsite. Here's another tip I discovered: If you murder a bird in your inventory or in a crate then it has a chance of becoming a morsel or a feather. If you instead simply move the bird over the fire then it always becomes a cooked morsel. I generally don't need many feathers so this is how I convert the large majority of my birds to meat.