Will I have to assign them a training schedule to get them to equip armor?
If you give them an order like "station" then they should grab the equipment before they go. To get them to wear armour permanently, go to the schedules section of the military screen [m]+[s ] and you'll find an option for uniforms. I think the key for changing the uniform rules is [u ]. You can set it to be worn at all times, even when off duty.
I just wish there was a way to store the food outside barrels and pots, ie forbid it for them, since its killing my brewing
There is. You can make custom stockpiles for specific types of goods.
1. Start a custom stockpile [p], [t]
2. Make sure all stockpile types are disabled [d] on the left-most list.
3. Enable the food option [e]
4. Block all kinds of food [b ]
5. Enabled prepared meals [u ]
Once you've placed that stockpile, you need to turn off the use of barrels.
1. Go to building properties [q]
2. Select the custom stockpile
3. Press [shift + e] to set the number of barrels to the minimum (zero).
You'll need to make sure that prepared meals are turned off in every other food stockpile. To modify existing food stockpiles:
1. Go to building properties [q]
2. Select the food stockpile
3. Highlight the food option in the left-most list.
4. Press [u ] to turn off prepared meals.
Note: If your existing food stockpiles contain prepared meals that are already in barrels, then they won't be moved to the new one because the dwarves want to move the whole barrel or nothing.
So the only way to prevent them from eating rock nuts is to just hope and pray that the dwarves that like rock nuts don't eat them? Well, that sucks. I guess I'll never be able to maintain a quarry bush farm, then. I'll just have to rely on my very slow animal industry to get me the tallow I need, then.
This is weird. I've never seen my dwarves eat my rock nuts. I've never tried forbidding other kinds of food to see if they start grabbing them, but as far as I can tell they don't touch them when other things are available.