The family that owned/lived in the house my wife and I presently live in, had trash/cob burner.

for many years my brothers and I would be tasked with shovel/raking two barge box loads of cobs into a room in the basement through a basement window.

they pretty much heated the house and baked bread with that cob burner. When I moved in, the basement was still full of cobs, and that is what I pretty much heated the house with for a couple years.