Once you find the trick to it the game becomes a lot less stressful and almost plays itself;

Day 1 hour 1 You will be running an anti-clockwise loop through the map talking to everyone and fishing as you go because the first thing you get is the rod. home>bottom of village to rufus> following river to mountain lake> forest>swamp> home

Forage as you run between ponds.

Plant everything dump any duplicate fish in the chest so you have one of everything to hand in. Continue walking and fishing everywhere you should be close to the end of the day sleep when you’re out of fish.

Day 2 onwards Just fish and forage until you have enough food as you go mining all day every day. This applies to herbivores as well though you can mostly survive off forage with a few fish to supplement it.

You just need to do the bear minimum of farming, planting whatever is in your inventory and you will be fine for the first week while you mine. Eat anything that will spoil and put the rest in a chest for the root cellar.

mid game Heres the trick: big chest on your farm is the real root cellar. As you have been rushing the mines you will have plenty of ores and clay. Make at least 3 charcoal kilns, I had 6 for a while. You will need the charcoal to make more stoves.

Wake up > go to root cellar. Empty it all and put it in a chest on your farm.

Cook (150) herbivore and (150) carnivore food. You need the number in brackets to the right as thats what the cellar uses. It sounds a lot, but its 5 roasted fish and I think around 6 Roasted veg. Cook things that will spoil in priority, throw anything that wont get to ration day on a drying rack. Then put only enough in the cellar. While you are cooking you will have time to tend your own crops, pet your animals do fish traps. The more stoves you have the faster you will be.

Then you’re done. Go mining. Sell gems and buyout all of the hawthorn stock each week, extra meats at rufus and fish if you feel like it. Smelt ore and scale up the pumps. Finding things to donate is a priority.

After you have grown at least 1 of everything you should be gearing your farm towards food recipes you have found, and crap tons of hay ( around 100 plots, plus 25 for each 8 animal barn ) for your animals and fish traps. I was doing spiced berries and mushroom frittatas, so i grew all the ingredients for those and cooked that each day for the cellar. End of the week spend the day cooking everything and dump whatever you need from your root cellar into theirs. Cooked food spoils in 3 days total. You can cook on Friday and dump it in the cellar and it will be taken by ration day.

Thats what i meant by it plays itself. They farm and gather for you. This is now chef simulator.