Our soil was once rocky mountain clay and now it is clay loam, I think in part because I gave away the tiller a few years ago. We use a lot of wood chips and sawdust as pathway mulch, and they host very happy soil-enriching fungi that do better with hand cultivation. You can use a broadfork to aerate soil without tilling it, very handy to have around.

When I need to plant in wet soil, I mix organic fertilizer into compost, place it in the bottom of a planting hole, and set the seedling over it. They like it!