You might enjoy Elliot Coleman’s books. He gardens year-round using movable hoop houses...in Maine! :)
http://www.fourseasonfarm.com/
His wife is Barbara Damrosch and she knows her stuff as well (at the same site.)
I try to compost most organic material scraps. I compost pine needles and aspen leaves that I rake up in the yard. I compost kitchen scraps and even used paper towels. I made a 16X16 ft area boardered with stacked rocks on a sloping yard and had 3 ft at the deep end and sloping up to about 1 inch at the top. I would just bury kitchen scraps into a trench and mix in dirt to help the breakdown. It all looks browh in a few months. I just moved compost around to make a terraced, raised bed and to work some compost into the ground in rows just in back of this compost area. I will have a 16X16 ft area that is very good compost and a 20X25 area that has rows enhanced down to 12 to 18 inches depending on the difficulty of large rocks encountered here at 8,500 ft elevation in the Colorado Rockies. I plan on gradually enhancing the 20X25 area and building it up into raised beds. I have these areas fenced now to keep the pesky fox out that digs up everything looking for something edible. I will have to see how the fence works against the occasional bear. I have a big stack of rocks over 50lbs each that I have dug out of the garden areas to build the outside border of the next raised bed areas. Since I am gardening in my compost area now I will need to rotate areas where I am burying kitchen scraps. I will use the pine needles and aspen leaves to fill walkways between raised beds and then work them in at the end of the season. If I don’t bury the kitchen scraps deeply I will be inviting bear trouble. A compost bin would be nice, but would not survive the summer.