I pretty much will only bother taking free pine since no one else wants it. It burns beautifully, despite the person giving it to me, warning me to only burn it outdoors. I just smile and nod.
We heated with wood when I was growing up; we didn't take pine because the soft wood doesn't hold much energy,
By volume (cord) this is true. But by dry/seasoned weight, this is not true. Pound for pound, well seasoned wood has about the same available BTU's regardless of what species it is. I have a, rather large, wood stove with current EPA certification. It was actually tested to burn pine, because it's the hardest species to burn completely. Once the firebox is hot, the secondary air supply looks like flames hovering in open space above the main fire. The great advantage of hardwoods, particularly black locust, is the extended burn times. Hardwoods have a higher charcoal to pitch energy ratio, so once the pitch has been 'boiled off' (yes, this is what happens) and burned, what you have left is a huge charcoal briquette that can slow burn for hours. Pine doesn't do this, because it's charcoal to pitch energy ratio is so low, by the time the pitch has boiled off, there isn't hardly any charcoal left. Also, I will take hardwood branches, break them up into small bits, put them into old christmas cookie tins, and put them into a hot fire. The pitch will boil off and jet out around the edges of the tin top, contributing to the heat of the current fire. Once the fire has died, and I'm sure that the tin is cool, I'll remove the remaining chunks of hardwood charcoal. I will either use these as kindling for another fire, because they light much easier than any regular wood does; or if I only need a smallish fire, I'll pile quite a bit of charcoal up with a little bit of pine branches. It's hard to get a small wood fire to burn hot enough to not smoke in my large firebox, which is 26" deep and 14" wide; but if I can keep it hot enough to light itself from the secondary air supply, there won't even be visible smoke coming from the flue, and I can't smell it standing outside. I've been doing it like this for 3 winters now, and have not had any creosote accumulation at all; nothing but ash on the chimney brush, and one stroke and I can see the shine of the stainless steel flue.
And another trick. If you have some damp (unseasoned) wood you'd like to use sooner rather than later, you can bake it on a cookie sheet at 215 degrees. While baking the wood, you are heating your house on a cool day, then you burn the wood to heat your house on a cold day. Fully 'seasoning' a fresh cut, 12 inch thick log would take about 5-6 hours of baking; so what I usually do is take a log that hasn't seasoned enough (1-3 months of seasoning), and bake it an hour or two just to finish it off. I'll typically let it cool off inside the oven, as the latent heat of the oven will help to 'season' it just a bit more. This has the side effect of killing any critters hiding inside, if creepy-crawlies in your wood is a concern; but this is also why a dedicated cookie sheet is required; don't try this with the cookie sheet you might actually like to make cookies on someday.