I live in an 1850s farm house with a spring up the hill and a backup well with a pump for those Augusts where the trees pull all the water out of the ground (not quite this one!) Our main heating system is two wood stoves with a small propane heater as a backup.

The power goes out a lot in the winter but at least we are cozy, particularly with today's LED/Lithium lights.

Back when I had ADSL from the central office my internet would stay up when I lost power so I had enough power to run a cordless phone and one (of two) DSL modems off a small UPS -- so I could keep 21st century comms. Once I got fiber-to-the-node most outages would affect the node so I gave up on the UPS. They're supposed to get FTTH to my house soon but I have no idea how that is going to be affected by outages.