Any advice on desert farming?

I've been lurking here for a while, but I just bought some land and I wanted to know if you guys had any advice/tips on farming in a desert environment. Some details...the land I purchased is a little south of Tucson, around 4000 ft. in elevation and is about 4 acres. It has some mesquite trees growing on it now and some small desert shrubs. I don't intend to really homestead on it or produce a lot of food but I would like to raise some chickens and rabbits and possibly some goats animalwise and hopefully grow some tasty vegetables too. I'm not very familiar with farming in this environment though, I'm from the southeast. Any tips on what kind of animals, what breeds, what plants would do well here? I would greatly appreciate any advice. I plan to irrigate with a cistern primarily but also have a well. I have about 1500 square feet of roof that I plan to put gutters on and collect water from. The land is pretty flat and the soil is very dry and very compacted so I'm probably looking at raised beds unless I can somehow transform it. We do get a lot of rain during monsoon season, but its all during a few months. The rainfall is around 17 inches I believe. There are no water features but I'd like to build a small pond.