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[Brunste]

I recently embarked on a temperate biome without picks to see if I was able to build a fort in a more human-village type style.

All is going well so far, except that I'm unable to find a way to get my dwarves something to drink. I can't grow plump helmets on the surface and the nearby river just froze up for the winter.

Does anyone have any creative ideas on how to find something drinkable? I have four strawberries that I figure I could use to get seeds and then grow more to distill, but I'm not certain how to get the seeds from them.

Save my dwarves!

[Wheeljack]

You could brew the strawberries to get a few drinks and their seeds, but depending on how many dwarves you have, some might not make the first harvest. I also believe roofing over a pond will unfreeze it? Not sure about that one. I always use aquifiers on biomes that freeze during the winter.

[Naryar]

Make sure you have enough barrels, brew strawberries (it's counted as a plant by the still, not a fruit), build farm plot, plant them seeds.

Be sure to make your dwarves gather surface plants and fallen fruit. You need to have Plant Gathering job allowed for a dwarf to harvest stuff that isn't in a farm plot.

[Zac]

I also believe the roof-over-ice trick would work. Building a roof above aboveground water will prevent it from freezing, I don't know if it will melt the ice however but you should try.

Wait a minute, did you let your dwarves be sober for three long seasons ?  What kind of heartless monster are you ?!

[Broseph Stalin]

I also believe the roof-over-ice trick would work. Building a roof above aboveground water will prevent it from freezing, I don't know if it will melt the ice however but you should try.

Wait a minute, did you let your dwarves be sober for three long seasons ?  What kind of heartless monster are you ?!

Is that new? I always had to make sure my wells were counted as "Underground" to prevent freezing.

[Larix]

I also believe the roof-over-ice trick would work. Building a roof above aboveground water will prevent it from freezing, I don't know if it will melt the ice however but you should try.

Wait a minute, did you let your dwarves be sober for three long seasons ?  What kind of heartless monster are you ?!

Is that new? I always had to make sure my wells were counted as "Underground" to prevent freezing.

I'm still on .40.18, but that one's been a misconception that just won't die ever since the switch to 3D, so chances are it hasn't changed, i.e.
freezing/liquid water only checks "aboveground" vs. "subterranean" and roofing over outside water doesn't prevent freezing (and never did).

[Brunste]

Wait a minute, did you let your dwarves be sober for three long seasons ?  What kind of heartless monster are you ?!

Luckily I embarked in Autumn and my booze supply just started running out as winter came. They're not alcoholess yet, its just slowly approaching that point.

Thanks to everyone who pointed out that brewing strawberries produces seeds. I wasn't sure how to get their seeds.

[Zac]

I also believe the roof-over-ice trick would work. Building a roof above aboveground water will prevent it from freezing, I don't know if it will melt the ice however but you should try.

Wait a minute, did you let your dwarves be sober for three long seasons ?  What kind of heartless monster are you ?!

Is that new? I always had to make sure my wells were counted as "Underground" to prevent freezing.

My bad, the change in 40.13 was about evaporation of inside above ground water not depending on the weather anymore but the changelog don't say anything about freezing. So I don't know if it will work.

[Aslandus]

You can also use things like potatoes and barley to make alcohol if you have them in your area, or if you're running the more current versions you can also collect fruit from trees to brew. you're going to have to check what you have in your area if you're running a no-digging/no-underground-farm fortress...

Here, I'll save you some search time and give you the link to the wiki:
http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Crops
The ones that have an entry under "drink" are brewable

[Col_Jessep]

Make sure your kitchen has no jobs running! Making food will destroy the seeds, brewing and eating raw fruit is fine.

[utunnels]

What if you build a roof over the river?
If it is already winter then things will be harder since you can't plant crops...
But even if you can, they probably need time to grow, and you need time to brew them.

Maybe by the time you can harvest, a caravan already come.

[Pirate Santa]

Tried a roofed over outside well in 40.16, the water still froze and deconstructed my well

[Kraegan]

Is it frozen year round?  I had one map where it was frozen for the whole year except Late Summer.  So I mined up underneath it while it was frozen and it filled my cistern for the 5 minutes or so that it is unfrozen.

You can also run some magma underneath it to melt the ice.  That can be a huge project though depending on how available magma is on your map.

[Magistrum]

Like pirate santa said, water not counted as "underground" will freeze once the proper season comes, and since you can't mine, it won't change. Flooring over the river will make it "Inside" but will still be "Above-ground" so it doesn't helps the freezing issue.
Try gathering all the plants in the surface(Yes, each and every one of them) and set all brewable plants/fruits/whatevers to not cook in the kitchen menu, you should be able to get away without major problems.
Also, I would recommend making your farms outside any kind of walls or traps you have, to make sieges interesting.

[Skuggen]

Make sure your kitchen has no jobs running! Making food will destroy the seeds, brewing and eating raw fruit is fine.

You can disable cooking of brewable items and brews in the kitchen menu. I always do this in the beginning.