New Site and need ideas for backlinks.

I have a new site that I want to start working on getting backlinks.

Google seems to weigh these heavily for the ranking and I believe they
like when the theme is really tight. A couple of questions:

1. How far off can you go from the theme?

2. I need ideas where to go in my market, which is: tea. Without linking to competitors sites, any ideas
what type of sites I would want to link to?

Thanks,

Jeeks

1. very far, as google is not that sophisticated at this point. most links should hopefully help the user, but having a small resource directory with some other semi related resources will not hurt you that much.

2. tea growers, tea recipies, tea history, herbal tea, medical tea usage ... I also am not affraid to link to competitors sites. I think I link to about 30 seo blogs on my seo blog
http://www.seobook.com/archives/000159.shtml

Why not link to competitors? You are not alone on the internet, the customer can find the other sites anyway, just by searching "tea".
I doubt that customers search the links pages anyway. I never did till I was looking for links. I just went back to google search and typed in something else.
BUT - if your competitor is above you in the ranks, then it will be of benifit for you to link to them.
Other sites I would suggest is bakery, tea pots, fine china for drinking tea, craft sites that use teas for crafting (tea dyed), and you always have "tea leaf readings"...lol

I like teas, what is your site? Can we see it?

Have you considered buying links? They arent expensive, and will save you tens of hours of requesting links, putting the links up, checking to make sure they didnt take your links down etc.

any suggestions as to where I can buy good links?