Solo players- Best practices and preparation?

Playing solo is both a relaxing experience and stressful. I just have some questions for best practices to make the most of situations and how to progress further. I’m on day 37 and I have a home base in meadows near water, have full troll gear and upgrading, bronze buckler, mace, 3 star finewood bow as my main weapons. I’ve been on a couple “expeditions” but mainly it takes hours to mine, find food, pelts, and have wood reserve.

1. Mining is a drag. Is making a cart path and numerous bases the best way to maximize mining copper? I feel like tin is easy, I know I’ll have my own struggles with iron when I get there.
2. Food- currently I run boar jerky, deer meat, and queens jam. Should I run something else during Bronze Age?
3. Any tips for resource management overall?

Other helpful tips throughout the way, I’ll just google elder tips, I was a pain in the ass last time I did solo, but I feel like I just try to over prepare and hope for the best.

I also play on vanilla, no mods. I had mods and they were super helpful such as a gear mod that had their own inventory and food slots, ores through teleporter mods (this was super cheesy but helpful for a solo player), and plant everything mod (just to plant berries). I would like to continue to play through on vanilla just mining is so daunting it makes it so boring even though that’s part of it.