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It sounds like your parents have a good thing going there. I'd probably do the same thing in their situation. In fact, I did — I burned cord wood, (and construction waste) for a couple of decades.

I only switched to a pellet stove when I moved into town (where there were “no-burn” days for ordinary wood stoves, whenever there was a thermal inversion). The pellet stove was a lot less work for me & it was easier to retrofit than a cord-wood burner would have been (no new chimney required). Pellet stoves burn so clean that there's no problem using them in urban areas — even those that have “no-burn” days to eliminate smog.

When I was using the pellet stove, most of the supply came from sawdust & other mill waste. This stuff used to be burned off in “bee-hive burners” — but, burning of mill waste was outlawed in the name of air quality. Pellets were a way of turning waste into a useful product.

BTW, the pellets I burned were cheaper than fuel oil — even when oil was only $30/bbl.