I think the trick is having a good stove. A good modern (last 5 years) stove will be roughly twice as efficient as one from the 80s (77% is the minimum to qualify for a tax credit now vs 30-35% for the pre-EPA stoves) - not quite as good as a masonry heater (generally 90%), but pretty close (and quite a bit easier to install). The breakdown for me:
1 cord of wood theoretically replaces 141 gallons of heating oil (my furnace and my stove are about equally efficient). For me, in practice 1 cord replaces about 200 gallons, because the thermal gradient across the house is different with the two sources, and a lower average temp is just as comfortable with the stove (the living room and office, where I'm sitting still, stay in the mid-70s, ranging to a hallway that's in the low 60s). At current prices, that's $450/cord theoretically, or $660/cord in practice. I could buy that split and delivered for $300/cord, but I cut my own instead:
- rent a 22-ton splitter for a day for $120, split 2 cords in 8 hours
- 30 minutes/day bringing in wood and reloading the stove for 4 months out of the year
- roughly 30 hours throughout the year finding downed trees, cutting them, and hauling them back
Total: 90 hours and $120 spent to save $900 - $1300. That's $8.50 - $13.10/hr ($10 - $15 if you account for not paying taxes on money saved) - while it's not enough for me to make a career out of delivering firewood, it's a pretty good wage for doing things like starting a fire (fun) and walking in the woods (relaxing, fun), and not bad for stacking/splitting (meditative, good low level exercise). I'll be honest, I would probably pay money to have a good fire going when coming inside in the winter, so the fact that I make money instead is pretty great.
And for what it's worth, I'm a short middle-aged woman, not some buff lumberjack - I make full use of my utility cart in the summer and small sled in the winter so that I'm not physically carrying much, I rent a hydraulic splitter because my attitude towards axes is roughly 'lolnope this is why we have power tools', and I don't deal with trees that I can't cut up with my 14" chainsaw, so I'm not messing with incredibly heavy rounds of wood.
Now, if I was heating with an old smoke dragon, that would be more like $3 - $5/hr, which is a different situation.
