Last year the in the inland PNW we had our worst winter on record. Our heating bills for a 2200sqft (one level) home was over $300 per month. The furnace is electric. In search for an answer to lower the bill I picked up an old Quadrafire Pellet stove and installed it over the summer. It had a few quirks to work out. I bought two tons of pellets and put them on a rack in the garage... and when the cold winter hit... I watched the bags disappear as I'd heft them into the house.
I'm heating the house with pellet stove 18 hours a day and the electric furnace takes over at night. I did install a remote thermostat to control the stove and though expensive, I highly recommend it.
Bottom line is that I pay a little over $5.00 a day to heat the house. I'd like to get corn to try, but it's not available in this area.
While living in the Cascades I heated with a wood stove and hauled in a logging truck's worth of wood. I buck it in the summer and the kids would carry it up during the day. That cost about $40 a month for the wood. The stove wouldn't bank well at night, so I went to banking at coal. I'd use a ton, or so, a winter and buried two tons of coal in the backyard as an "energy supply" if I ever needed it.
I liked the coal and the wood, and the ease of the pellet stove. One problem with the pellet stove is that if you loose electricity then you'd best have a backup generator or lots of batteries and an inverter. Me, I have both, and I'm modifying my Prius to power the house during these weather events.
There are alternatives, but there's an up-front cost to each of them.