Ah, yes! When I was a young man in Alaska I found a pamphlet in the public library that I printed a copy of. It showed in detail how to build a windmill to produce electricity using three 1"x12" planks, some scraps of pipe, some cables for guy wires to keep the mast standing upright, a 1973 Pinto rear end, the alternator from a Cadillac (130 amps of power, instead of 80 from the Pinto's alternator), and using ordinary lead acid car batteries to store the power. The author even provided a more complex design that included steel weights attached to springs that progressively 'trimmed' the planks out of the wind the faster they turned, to prevent storms from destroying the windmill, but still enabling it to produce power in gale force winds.

He also provided a mechanism to pivot the mast on which the windmill stood at the bottom so that you could lower it to the ground to avoid storms, and to maintain the equipment, which was much easier on the ground than standing on a ladder. It wasn't very efficient, but it was made of scrap parts that were very inexpensive and did produce usable electricity in remote sites. A lot of people live in remote sites in Alaska, so I was smitten with the idea.

However, winds are fickle. The go from none at all on windless days, to fierce storms that would destroy your equipment. Hydro power doesn't have that drawback, and there are countless streams plunging down the mountains of Alaska. I became enamored of micro-hydro because water was much denser than air, too, and delivered much more physical power to a turbine than air per square inch. I devised my own plans to make a micro-hydro turbine using a BMX bicycle wheel, soup ladles, and the derailleur from a ten speed bicycle to increase the RPMs delivered to the automotive alternator. The biggest problem with hydro is that to get the best power ratios from steep mountain creeks you needed a pipe that delivered the water to the turbine, and a few hundred feet of pipe was both expensive and difficult to deliver to remote sites in Alaska.

But then I found out about wood gas! Back in WWII Europe was struck by fuel rationing, and the war often left people without electricity as well. However by cleverly burning wood in reduced oxygen burners, the smoke from that anoxic fire was highly flammable, and was used to fuel ordinary internal combustion engines on automobiles. Many different designs were adapted to different automobiles in Europe during the war, and today there are even folks that make them for modern cars, for stationary applications like generators to make electricity, and for anything you need fuel for an internal combustion engine.

There are many different ways to produce electricity that can be cobbled together from scrap materials, and this even includes solar panels today. In 2008 a means of printing solar panels on PET (from recycled beverage containers, like water or soda bottles) using an ordinary inkjet printer was published. Using inks infused with metallic particles or graphene oxide, the circuits necessary could be printed with the inkjet printer onto the plastic bottle slice open and fed into the printer. Another amazing way to make power.

Then batteries have always been expensive, bulky, and wear out too soon. Well, a way to store electricity in ordinary concrete with some carbon black (carbon dust, like lamp black) added in was devised. Using salt water as an electrolyte to carry the charge meant that storing electrical power for stationary applications could hardly be less expensive.

Of course manufacturers aren't making these inexpensive power production and storage options. We have to make our own, because they're so inexpensive there isn't much profit to be gained from making and selling them industrially.

Edit: The simplest way to use aquaponics I have read is from Kurt Saxon, who wrote 'The Poor Man's James Bond' series of books on expedient means, largely regarding security. Using a 55 gallon barrel filled with water, you could keep a few catfish that you fed table scraps. You dip the water out of the barrel that the catfish fertilize with their waste and use that water on garden plants, replacing it with fresh water for the fish. This is manual labor replacing a pump, or aquarium bubbler, which most people prefer because it's less work. But all you really need is a food grade barrel, some catfish, a bucket, a source of water, table scraps, and a garden to fertilize to use aquaponics, if you're not afraid of a little work. Here's how to do it with pumps instead of a bucket.