I've questioned some of the above actions myself. I, too, would opt for the second floor but considering the possiblities of escape with a child might make me think twice. Judith can still be carried. Imagine the difficulty in hauling a child of three or four around. Or multiple little ones.
I found it incredible that Daryl and Beth sat around the living room of that house, lights on with piano and singing filling the dark silence of the night. Was there any better announcement of their presence?
Some have cited the greater danger being other humans, which brings me to another point. Obviously, there are other survivors - so how long can the remaining food last? Perishables were gone in a week. That leaves cans and plastic-wrapped dry goods - and the survivors who arrived before you. What are the odds of running into others when people are foraging and moving on?
Rick was laughed at for turning "farmer" but someone better start growing some shit or they're gonna starve. The food supply is finite and Safeway isn't "safe." It's likely been cleaned out like all the other ransacked stores they've encountered.
Surely, the bottled water has been snapped up, too. Did they boil that creek water at the prison? God knows, our streams are so polluted as to be useless without a purifying kit.
The food supply in Georgia is not as finite as people believe. Yes, there would be few manufactured supplies in stores and homes at this point, but Georgia is an agricultural state. The Grove proved that. The episode title was named after the peach and pecan grove near the house they found. Being an agricultural state, groves and fields from farms would be plentiful and growing food in the summer months, especially in the countryside outside the cities. Georgia ranks number 1 in the US for pecan and peanut production, number 2 for cotton and rye, and number 3 for peaches and tomatoes. "Georgia has 11.1 million acres of land devoted to farms, with an average farm size of 222 acres." "Approximately one in six Georgians works in agriculture, forestry, or a related field." As a farming family, Hershel, Maggie, and Beth would know this and would know that at this point foraging in fields would be a better bet than scavenging in houses. Daryl, a survivalist, would know this too. "Other crops produced in Georgia include apples, berries, cabbage, corn, cotton and cottonseed, cucumbers, grapes, hay, oats, onions, peaches, rye, sorghum grain, soybeans, tobacco, tomatoes, vegetables, watermelons, wheat, and ornamentals, turf grass, and other nursery and greenhouse commodities." Many of these are perennials, meaning they continuously recur year after year.
As for livestock, along with pigs they had at the prison, "beef cattle, dairy cows, and hogs are produced on farms throughout the state. Miscellaneous livestock such as meat goats and sheep, catfish, trout (aquaculture), and honeybees are also produced." Georgia is also the number one in the nation in chicken and egg production. If Daryl can still find deer, as Patrick thanked him for doing in episode 1, then some of these animals or birds would still be around too. Also, though I have seen walkers in the rivers, I have never seen one eating fish. I doubt they could even catch one as slow and uncoordinated as they are. I am a better fisherman than hunter, so I would look for a rod and reel in any building I came across.
I am glad that they are finally portraying the food available in the countryside in the grapes the girls and Beth found in Inmates, and the pecans and peaches in The Grove. If they are stumbling across farms, then they should be stumbling across fields with food.
ETA: I agree with learning to farm, so that once you find a stable place that you wouldn't have to risk your life foraging in fields to find food. Being an agricultural state, there would be plenty of farming supplies around. Along with farming though, I would learn canning, so that I would have food year round. Thankfully, Georgia is a southern state and with generally mild winters, but they do have winters and would need food to eat then too. Wild animals and birds would be scarce in the winter too.