Actually the best way I can give you would be using traditional wood burning and heating however you are in the desert so that complicates things however you do have quite a bit of brush in the area that you could repurpose for power generation and start thinking thermoelectric generators to make electricity off of your heating.

There is quite a bit of burnable stuff in the area and since you said you have a fire hazard start collecting everything close to the house and start working outwards!

And absolutely you're definitely going to need some small tools to begin and then as you grow continually upgrading your tools is definitely going to be a must.

There are so many alternatives that you can fit to your geographical environment.

Then there is also the solar heaters that you could also slave to thermoelectric generator