Rye and Barley are not good crop?

[morrneyo]

I like my character eating flat bread, but talking about bake it, it's really a laborious job!
First I have to harvest it and thresh them all like other kinds of crops.
After that I have to grind them to peel chaff and make them ready to cook.

The grinding job is really tiresome and yields almost nothing comparing to the time I spend.
Because it consumes a lot of time, this job usually require more calories then I can get from flatbread.

I really like peas, broad beans and turnips because they yield a lot of crops and need no prepare job.
On the contrary to this rye and barley require extra jobs which make their value low in my opinion.

[PALU]

I use the Njerpezit Cooking mod to get some variation and "better" cooking options, in particular the pot prepared food that combine multiple ingredients to fill a pot completely, allowing you to cook less often. Combining items also means you can get some high nutrient food (meat) together with lower quality ones to end up with a good total amount. The Goulash also used a limited amount of flour, which means you don't have to grid flour as often (and, as a result, don't have to use as much flour in total). The mod also contains a number of nicer bread options. If I remember correctly, the flatbread one simply uses more ingredients, resulting in more bread per baking session.

Unfortunately, the UrW nutrition model means using ingredients such as mushrooms and berries are loss activities. I'm not sure if you're going to starve to death trying to live only on berries (and they'll go out of season eventually anyway), but you sure get gradually hungrier and hungrier even with a constantly full belly because of the low nutrient concentration (an occasional addition of the meat from e.g. a bird can keep you going, though).

[ModernNorseman]

I do get what you are saying - but I think it's a part of the charm. It's nutritious and the yield of a medium sized field should get you through a winter easily. As for the labor, I often make it a winter job grinding out flour next to a warm fire as the freezing winds and snow roam outside of the hut. As PALU said, using various mods with cooking recipes makes it more fun by far (from my perspective) by for example using crops for making beer or new sorts of bread.

[Shrimp]

Maybe it's just my opinion, but i think the game intends for any non-meat source of food to be secondary by nature. You should always seek meat, but other sources are there when it can't be found or to slow down your consumption of it. For example, i always have fistfuls of berries in my cellar and i eat them alternating between them and my cuts of meat, it may not be worth it but i feel it "recycles" me a couple of cuts every time i eat.

I also think it's a matter of food spoiling. Since flour lasts longer than meat, it would be good to have them stockpiled around, even if it costs more energy to do so, in case your trapping/hunting/fishing yields nothing.

I do agree that elaborated cooking is usually not worth it in vanilla though. Meat and raw vegetables usually do a better job at feeding you without the hassle of gathering ingredients, and you don't have to carry around a pot for it.

[PALU]

Yes, the long shelf life of grain and vegetables is an important reason to produce them as backups (although dried/smoked meat works well too).
In most cases there's not much point in trying to alternate with other food stuff to use up meat slower, as the meat tends to spoil before it's all used up anyway (and then be used as dog food).

I basically never carry a pot around, as the contents of the pot is poured into a bowl as soon as the cooking is done, so carrying a pot is either a mistake (forgot to change the container), or because I'm going on a longer trip and have a little bit left from the first bowl (I alternate between two bowls). As soon as the bowl is empty I then pour the contents of the pot into it and let the dog carry the pot.

[Shrimp]

Also, i just had something ingame that reminded me of this thread. There is also the fact that animals will come around and eat your crops like locusts. It's annoying but there is nothing you can really do about it unless you decide to trap the heck out of your farmland, which is possibly not doable depending on how big it is. There will always be a random annoying hare/bird that will appear out of nowhere after a while and eat clean your crops.

For some reason though, they often leave rye and barley alone in my games, maybe they don't eat those? In any case it can be a good option to plant these knowing animals will leave them alone.

[Dungeon Smash]

I would also like to recommend the Njerpez cooking mod, if you feel that rye and barley are not worthwhile in the basic game.  It adds so many fun and "flavorful" options.  I think it really increases enjoyment of the game.

[PALU]

Something has "picked" barley/rye for me in the past, and since you can't do it yourself even accidentally, I suspect it's been done by birds, but it's been nothing like badgers eating most of other crops.

I keep animals away by a fence (with a few bear traps in gaps to actually trap big ones), with a complete line of fox pawboard traps inside of it (I enter/leave the area by zooming in/out). I'm not sure animals have ever gotten themselves caught in the inner traps, quite possibly because a fence with traps inside aren't considered pathable to animals. I do catch large animals in the bear traps, though, even with the pawboards inside of them.

[Dungeon Smash]

Hares seem to love turnips more than anything else.  If you notice a hare is eating your crops, try setting up a few loop snares and/or lever traps near your field.  there is also a certain ritual which can help you... with the ritual and turnip bait, you will soon catch the hare.

Birds are a little trickier but they are attracted to berries.  I don't bother to surround my entire field with traps, i just put a bunch scattered around here and there.  Sooner or later the bird gets caught, I might lose a plant or two but that's not a big deal.

[Shrimp]

I brought the animals into discussion because i just had that happen to me in the game. Received a bunch of seeds from the tutorial mission so i planted them. Came back to my settlement to find everything except rye eaten and hare footprints all over the place. Also, there is no "noticing". By the time you see a animal around, your field is probably picked clean already.

I also thought of traps at first too, but i feel they are too much effort. The fence was quite a trouble in itself to set up, it's kind of a shame to see it doesn't actually do its job. I don't have any more seeds anyways so i will just stick to hunting/fishing for the time being.

[Brygun]

Your own fields make a wonderful bait for small game.

I like to think of it as the animal have taken away grains and given back meat.

Its a circle of life.

Very traditional.