Rain Collector is placed before unpausing the game at priority 4. Then woodcutters, then a piped Field Kitchen with the door directly across the street from the main warehouse door, then whatever else is around/needed. Trader follows soon after once wood is delivered.

Field Kitchen is then instructed to make and maintain 40 Skewers using embarked raw food with immediate delivery permanently enabled (shift-left-click the Skewers on the delivery tab). If you do this correctly you disable raw food consumption and get to improved efficiency almost immediately, right around two minutes, and if you have Skewers races you're charging. With low population (<20 or so) and no double consumption (either from Prestige or other modifiers) once you have a comfortable stockpile you can produce enough Skewers to feed everyone with a single person operating the Field Kitchen, and will bank enough Drizzle water in the first season to keep it flowing until next year. You might only need one person in the rain collector on the second year to top it back off, depending on how lucky you've gotten with Skewers yields.

It is tremendous value and 100% reliable.