Howdy - Me again
Just wanted to thank all for the advice! - I have played the game by pausing for the last week or so - I don't get all that much paytime - so just tonight I achieved my 90k tech points for farming L3! And mind you I had a population of 14 during pre-dam period.
A whole lotta mushroom picking is what saved me while that dam was being built! Even then I watched my food levels drop lower and lower over time as the mushroom picking couldn't keep up and there seemed to be vast periods of nothing to find on the ground whatsoever!
I sure got good at moving around that map let me tell you.

One thing I noticed through this exhausting, yet fun challenge was that I decided to get Exploration L2 before going for Farming L3 and I found that to be totally unnecessary as there was virtually no difference in the amount of objects popping up on the beach as compared to level 1. I had already found nearly the entire variety of butterflies and shells while on ExplL1 and after obtaining L2 - I didn't see ANY increase in how often items popped up or the rarity of those items - in fact, there seemed to be longer cycles of nothing happening. And even then it was just the basics that appeared. What I'm supposing is that the game program cycles through the four different kind of collections at all times and although with L2 I was technically eligible for pebbles, I hadn't built the dam yet and thus not uncovered (ahem - pebble beach) so the game cycled through periods of pebble appearances without anything appearing on my map....I'm suspecting it is the same with the beetles. Hope this wasn't TMI but I felt it could be helpful. What would be neat is an increase of the blessed red mushrooms in L2 Exploration if possible.

Anyways - Thank you all again for your help - when in doubt play on pause - it's worth it!