Why on earth are you "holding out as long as possible"? That's ridiculous. Find wood fuel from another source besides your own land. There is fallen timber that is dry and ready to burn all over CT. I used to live there.
Also, make sure you have another source of fuel besides wood. Fireplace inserts are not nearly as effective as free-standing wood stoves when it comes time to heat an entire house.
Doc, I'm more than happy to learn about the places you were able to score wood here, if you want to provide any info via PM.
The vast majority of our wood was (is) scored from other people's property.
My challenges are: (1) I'm realistically able to get wood on the weekends only as I do not work locally and don't get home until 7-8.. making it a little too late to then drive an hour to get wood, (2) we unfortunately don't own a PU truck or trailer... only an SUV.... so I've had to pass on some rotting and/or infested wood, (3) still very new to all this. We bought our inserts less than 12 months ago... so we ended up getting them around Thanksgiving last year, but weren't fully prepared for the amount of wood needed. If anything, we may have 'rushed' into getting the inserts. Back then, we had never heard of AS or OWBs. Having said that... the inserts, when running, worked great last year and we were able to get the main level up to 72° and the up stairs to 69° with minimal loss over night. That's a lot higher than when the furnaces are running!
Please don't take the above as whinning... we're working on getting better and saving funds to be able to get more needed stuff.. such as a PU or trailer. One of those will help tremendously. Unfortunately, there's nothing I can do about the not working locally and having many other people end up scoring while I'm still at work. Can't tell you how many times I've had something lined up only to later find out... well, this other guy was able to come pick it up during the day today, so it's gone now... or what's left is crap, as the other dude cherry picked the stuff. We're working hard at trying to make contacts and get leads, but we're the noobs trying to bust into this and there are a number of 'veterans' in the area... not to mention the number of local tree companies that sell firewood on the side (a number have added this line of business over the last year to try and supplement the loss of income from their main tree service business).
Here are some pics of the stacks for the '09/'10 winter.