Steven, I hope your initial garden efforts went well and that 2022 is shaping up to be even better! I've been embarking on a similar food forest project, and this will be our 5th year. My advice is to keep planting, mulching, learning from your mistakes, and building on your successes.
I'm in southern Maine as well, and have heavy clay soil that lacks fertility. Adding organic matter (compost, sphagnum moss, wood chips) is a great way to feed the soil biology and start building more vibrant soil that is full of life. I've had good luck using chipdrop and getting arborist wood chips delivered whenever they are available, and using these as a deep mulch to create new garden beds. It takes time for them to break down, but they are cheap/free and if you inoculate them with wine cap mushrooms they break down even faster. After a year on the ground they break down a fair bit, and there are more worms etc to be found in the soil underneath them.
