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« on: August 08, 2008, 07:02:49 pm »
First off, what he said.
Second, custom stockpiles are the key to efficient forts so that is one of your problems. You can get away with it in most things, but food and drink are tricky. You should 1) make a furniture stockpile that only accepts barrels next to your brewery, 2) make a food stockpile with only brewable plants accepted next to your brewery, 3) turn off cooking for all of those plants.
Your barrel problem is likely that they are overflowing with something, probably either seeds, prepared foods, fat or raw fish. Seeds work better when they go into bags not barrels, so turning off seeds on all of your old stockpiles and making new ones that only accept seeds, but no barrels can help there. Prepared foods can take up more space when put in barrels than when just stacked in stockpiles, so doing the same thing with prepared food as with seeds can help there. Fat needs to get processed into tallow, and raw fish processed into eatable fish, then they can start getting used instead of taking up space. Also, make more barrels and bags, and make less of any food that can't be made into liquor. If you get your prepared meals into stockpiles without barrels, then you can free up barrel space by cooking otherwise you can wind up making matters worse. If you have tons of a particular seed, you can go ahead and start cooking those too, just keep an eye on stocks.
For labor you might think about using the job management interface if you have an administrator. (I believe it is J to go to jobs, and M to management) There you can tell the dwarves to make 30 wood barrels, instead of going to the carpenter shop and making the request there. They need to get approved by the manager, so it can take a little longer to get started, but it is helpful as you get larger.