I have spent a few winters where my oil furnace was a wood stove.
And they were truly overheated winters indeed.
However, heating with a wood stove is quite work intensive to be sure. There is a lot to it. This oil furnace requires yearly flue cleaning & maintenance. And of course, there is all manner of chopping, chopping & stacking of the wood. It was still a worthwhile venture & a unique experience that I will always remember. However, where I am now, I simply don’t assume I would make it too long without current Heating & A/C. This has nothing to do with the heating though. Our Winter time is quite mild & does not require a good deal of heating. But the 4 plus months of summer time are a completely weird matter. That heat & humidity is something that I just don’t assume I could manage without the help of air conditioning. The temps outside hover around triple digits for at least 4 months. And it doesn’t cool off all that dramatically at night. I can’t imagine what people went through prior to the heat pump. There was basically just an evaporative cooler. And I have been around those. Trust me, they are nothing like a heat pump for cooling a home. Plus, they don’t mitigate the humidity levels at all. Nope, I’ll have to stick with the current air conditioning to get through the summer time heat & humidity for sure. Without it, I’d have to head back up north & get back to a arena where the summer time isn’t quite so hot. Even then, I assume I’d still have to invest in a gas oil furnace to get through those winters now.