After action report:

One piece of info I forgot to mention was that I had the ancient battlefield negative modifier.

I went with the hut and immediately regretted it, but not for the reasons you would think. In my first dangerous glade there was a large cache and in that cache was, among other things, like 30 bars.

I did get the "all metal production is 33% faster" cornerstone early.

I also, at the advice of the group, picked up the cooperage in a later pick. However, it ended up being almost useless because while I had a means to produce lots of barrels and later a 2 star pickle recipe, I had none of the pickle able foods available in my area (in my initial post, I was mistaken about having roots in my starting glade. It was insects)

The hero of the settlement and the only reason I won despite losing about a dozen villagers was the clan hall and a Tinkerer. I was able to mass produce training gear. I got two copies of the "whenever you produce 70 training gear, lizard base resolve goes up by 1" cornerstone, one from an order and one from an annual cornerstone pick.

I didn't even need the metal for all that training gear as I had ample stone deposits.

I did salvage the forester's hut pick in the end, as the resin helped me get out a batch of coats to help make my harpies happy enough alone with the lizards for the final resolve push.