We are living in a mountain log home with forced air heating and a furnace-mounted whole house humidifier. This is very effective but also very expensive as we use a great deal of propane. We would like to install a wood-burning fireplace insert to use more of the wood supply that we have and to decrease reliance on expensive propane gas.

Question - we know that wood stoves really dry out the inside air of a home. In our case, the logs of the home would suffer cracking and checking in that very dry environment. We are almost sure that the small pots of simmering water usually placed on top of the stove would not be nearly enough to keep the air moist as we have the conventional vaulted ceilings.

Is our only solution to have portable humidifiers in every room?

They make steam humidfiers that can be attached to your duct work in the home. They generate a bunch of moisture and the only thing you have to do run the blower on your furnace to distribute the moist air. Look into that for an answer to your problem.