Best way to convert lawn to garden

I want to convert half the back yard to a vegetable garden. I watched some of the permaculture videos and I just wanted to confirm that clover is the best living mulch. I'm in the desert part of Washington State, so we have 4 seasons but winter is mild and the summers are really hot. In the past I've done a lot of gardening with organic amendments, earth worms etc., but this is a new location and I haven't used living mulch before. So I need some advice. My friend has some goats I can borrow to eat all the grass down, then I can plow, then disc and plant. When is the best timing. Is there anything I can do this fall so in the spring the cover crop will emerge?

Howdy Eileen, welcome to permies!

Try looking up Helen Atthowe.
And see more discussion on this thread.

https://permies.com/t/8992/organic/soil-podcast-Helen-Atthowe

Now is a good time to seed some cool weather cover crops: clover, winter peas, vetch, maybe some turnip and tillage radish. I would say just let the goats mow it down good and then don't plow or disk, but just throw down an inch of some type of mulch and broadcast your cover crop seed on top of it. How big an area are we talking about?

So glad I haven't missed the window of opportunity. The area is about 30' x 150'. I saw some of Helen's video's and that is how I found Permies.com. In the past I've used mulch and was proud of keeping things weed free; used organic amendments etc..........had worms in the compost and under the bird feeder - which is where they really went wild. So I'm really excited to use the cover crop this time. Thanks so much.