Growing regional wealth reliably?

I usually roll a start where I have hunting and poor fertility.

I start with selling planks. followed by surplus leather from Hunting.
Followed by, wooden parts, shields, warbows and _shoes_ wow, this is when possibilities open up and I can bring in Barley to help with my ale.
I almost always horde stone.

This is where my trade mix diverges depending on if I have, infinite deposits of Clay or Iron, roof tiles, yarn, apples etc.

Post-ale is when my region slips into a negative trade deficit. Roof tiles usually max out at about 2,000 income and keeping a positive trade income gets harder as ale consumption grows with the size of the town.

How do you scale up? It appears as if I can't ignore yarn or perhaps scaling up apples in order to keep up with growth and barley consumption. I'm trying to put off adding a region that'll grow and export Barley back to the primary region.