posted 12 years ago
One word, William, one word: nuclei.
If you try to do broadscale mulching you will absolutely kill yourselves. Just too much work. Work out where to place nuclei that you can mulch intensively, get them well under control, put your most valued and valuable crops there and get those system going first. Yes, include mulching species in those, but put a lot of crops in too--they'll build OM in the soil too. Concentrate all your biomass on those sites. In the meantime, plant coppicing willows or other species in blocks where you can cut and move the material, and plant other swathes in cover crops--grass and legumes, for example--that you can harvest mulch from also, but you are still building soil through their root systems. Then use your nuclei as nurseries as well as food production, and you can more cheaply expand your systems form there, building the biomass in the nuclei using multiple strategies and sources,and building the biomass in the other less intensive future planting zones more slowly and passively, but still building.
That's my off the top of my head response. Other things are also possible. Try to get as many diverse kinds of biomass as you can--grassy, fast decomposing as well as lighter and heavier/denser woody material. This will help diversify the soil food web. Coarse woody debris (CWD) is a critical part of woodland soils!
You can also build multilayer systems with pollarded trees, especially n-fixers at wide spacing above, harvested periodically for mulch, and crops below.
Rotational grazing also isn't a bad idea, you can build a lot of soil fast with that if you do it right. Sheep, goats, chooks . . .
OK, gotta run.
Good luck! Have fun!
d
PS: YOU ARE WELCOME! Thank you for going for it! Please share what you learn with others and spread the wealth.