Dian Green

Do you have any access to thrift stores? Local Facebook marketplace? You can get a large amount of leather off of one beat up leather jacket. It's also shocking how much you get if you skin a couch or leather chair, even if a chunk of it is damaged. ( people may let you skin it for free if it's going to be dumped)
Broken jewelry is sometimes sold in cheap grab bags.
Really cheap and damaged picture frames can also give you great bases for fancy covers. Just take the glass out and you can put in leather, fabric or mosaic panels and then paint, carve or cover the frames.

If you have a local Habitat for Humanity store, they might have partial sheets of small stone or ceramic mosaic tiles. Also the textured wallpaper that looks like tin. Also they can have lots of little metal bits for texture and some even have metal tape for really cheap.

Old buttons can give a really great range of detail and texture to things and you can paint over the plastic ones or too bright metal ones.

Tinfoil can even work, or aluminum plates and baking pans from the dollar store.

Peas are my main winter microgreen. I've found that the biggest thing for them was to use at least a thin layer of inoculated potting soil. Just coir was not a winner for me.
I did do up a post that shows how I grow them. Growing pea microgreens

I'm not familiar with the setup you mentioned but the lack of soil may be the issue with peas.

I grew up in Newfoundland and low bush blueberries, wild picked off the barrens, was our main winter fruit. (Frozen)
Crumble is always my fave. Pie is good, but those were so intense that my mother always liked to cut them with some apple to reduce the sweetness.
I liked taking a bowl from the freezer and pouring some milk and vanilla over them and then waiting a couple of minutes until it all went slushy like a thick milkshake.

We moved 3 years ago to a pretty blank slate. A bit smaller than you, at just under an acre.
The first thing I did was get my next years order in for some of the slower growing fruit and nut trees.

Around here, there is really only only one good supplier for most of the rarer nuts and they sell out fast with almost a years lead time. I ordered less than a month after our offer went through.
I was able to get chestnuts, hazelnuts, pawpaw, persimmons and low tannin oaks. And most were in the "too big to ship" sizes since we were able to go pick up.
I had moved 60 + pots of things as well.
The first year was about laying out some of bones. The first fall, I put in a chunk of what we moved and prepped spots for the trees that were coming in the spring. We got lucky and scored some free arborist wood chips so I did leaf piles with chips to hold them down and didn't have to lift turf.
When the trees came in, most had at least a partial guild waiting for them.

Since then, I've been filling in our range of other fruit trees as well as shrubs and perennials and making beds and expanding and maintaining the guilds. Also hunting cheap supports, structures and supplies and running some experimental plot trials to see what works here.
Propagation is what I need to do more of now. We're still buying a few things but I'm mostly able to stick to deals and clearance specials now since the "needs" are in and it's all about "wants".

What I want is a way to map my property, mark plants and then track yields and uses over years.

Best would be if I could mark off the lines from a satellite image. Let it keep the orientation info so shade, sun and light angles and timing would be available. Be able to box off and mark buildings. Then expand in and create and fill in geometric shapes and label them as specific plants, so it needs to be able to go down quite small. Perhaps layers where you step down into beds that can be filled in with more details.
Be able to mark perennials and trees and fill in their ages and specific varieties. I'm sure being able to add it pollination types and timing would be helpful for lots of orchard types too. Then make notes for each year about pruning, feeding, issues and production and be able to sort back through the years as time goes on.
Since I'm dreaming, options to create layers or tools that would show how possible things could fit/work in the space. Like you could select a beehive and move it around on the map and it would show an overlay of their typical collection range.

Peas are our main indoor winter crop but I do them as microgreens. The greens taste like fresh peas and you get more for the work and space.
Biggest thing to keep in mind is that I have found them to do MUCH better in inoculated potting soil than coir or any sterile medium. They really need root partners.

Just wanted to say that while my numbers last year may not gave been amazing, I am super happy with how things are going in the plot this year.
I just did a thick layer of leaves over it all in the fall, after planting a bunch of garlic.
Did maybe a 1/2 hour of weeding in the spring and planted.
No other work done except harvesting and it is so lush! Skirrets, tomatoes, sunflowers, radishes, beans and cucumbers are all doing great along with some purchased blackberries. (And the garlic were huge)

I am letting a large amount of the green beans go to seed since Im going to need them for next year's plot. I want to use this method for another big section!

Looking at the results of year 2 on my gamcod plot and my answer is now beans. Just regular, green beans, beans.
I did a big trench of them last year and while my numbers then weren't amazing, this year is shockingly good.
I just did another thick layer of leaves over it in the fall and then planted this spring. The tomatoes, skirret, garlic and blackberries that went in are doing amazing and there has been no work other than planting and harvesting this year. (Aside from killing Japanese beetles since thus years beans are a great trap crop for them. My drowning bucket has been busy)

After lots of dry heat we've had a couple of days of rain this week and the Shiitake are flushing.
This is the best one yet! (Inoculated in spring '24)

We love them so much I am considering buying some logs from our local tree guys this winter so I can do a bunch more stacks.

Mushrooms are back on the menu!

There are few things you can do. One of the bigger issues is if you want the manuscripts to be able to be rolled. If you are willing to keep them flat, you can fairly easily gild.
As you've already noted, a red background shows off the gold. You could also use a dark yellow ground. I haven't use egg tempura, but you may improve your chances by burnishing it a bit before adding some adhesive, to reduce the chance of it not sticking. Do either base colour and then a thin layer of rabbit/animal hide glue and then the metal foil. You do have to get the timing right with the natural glues. You want it juuuust almost fully dry, but not quite.
That is the big benefit of the modern stuff. It has almost no limit to its working time, so long as it is clean.
You could also try inks instead of the tempura, just on where you want the gilt.

Gold prices are super high. I've barely ever worked with actual gold. Most of what you can get is brass. It looks good but can tarnish over time if it's not sealed. It's been 10+ years since I did any buying so things may have changed but the Japanese stuff was hugely better than the German, which were the 2 main types out there. I always worked with loose sheets in books of usually 10 to 12 pieces rather than the stuff mounted to paper that you peel off.

You can cut or break off small pieces that are just a bit bigger that the area you want, use a static charged clean and dry paint brush to move the scrap over and another soft clean brush to smooth it down. It will crumble and brush away where there isn't any glue.