Love Nystam

you want a not overly hot soil and a good texture for young roots to take hold in. maybe some strained compost from your site mixed with sand. I would go for a 50/50 mix. If you think your compost is to hot you could put it in a pot with drainage holes and water alot, that way you leak the nutrients out of the compost, but for most vegetables and herbs I think you are fine. I wouldn't use compost with alot of manure since it could be too hot.

I like to have some lawn around the house to have an area to just hang out, both me and my dog likes lying in the grass basking in the sunlight..
But I believe it has other benefits as well, green manure and also having some wind blowing in the evenings to keep some of the mosquitos away, we have alot of them where I live. And as mentioned before, its nice to have an area where you can just put stuff or set up a temporary project or whatever.. as for maintenance:
If you have more lawn than you can manage with human power, you have to much lawn!

Hi, I have no experience yet with using woodchips as mulch in garden. I am about to move to a house next to a piece of old farmland.

I'm thinking for establishing new garden soil I will use newspapers and sow potatoes in rows straight on the ground (in-between the newspapers) and then cover the potatoes with (bought?)soil and the surrounding newspapers with mulch such as grassclippings, leaves and waste from the neighbours horsies (straw, peat, poo). and of course keep adding mulch as the growing season goes on.
And the next year after that I can move my potatoes to a new area and the area which I previously used for potatoes only can now grow other veggies..

Then at the same time I will also try to create a huge pile containing wood chips and horse manure and let it sit for one whole season, maybe put a sprinkler on it if the weather is dry.
I'm thinking by piling it together with manure you will create a nice compost you can then put on top of your garden.
You see alot of piles in the garden of eden movie. I think good compost is the key, thats the end result we're after.