July is midwinter at Stanton and with it comes not snow and some sort of damp purgatory, but enticing crisp clear mornings brought about after the sun has finished burning off the fog.

The trees tell you it is winter though and the fires are going day and night, the tell tale spirals of smoke from chimneys, and the art work that goes into stacking firewood.

Firewood is never just stacked, it is sculpted, particularly in Maydena.

Winter has the most blissful pasttime to be enjoyed by all. Sleeping. The uninterrupted, sound sleeping to be done in a warm doona-laden bed is just magic, particularly if it is windy and raining outside. If sleep does not come easy then try an old house in winter.

Stanton is more of a drowser than a full blown sleeper; a nodder in a leather chair; a nana napper by choice not quite a watchful sentry more of a curious aged guardian. Just watching.

You can tell the character of an old house by the way it wakes up with people. Here in 2010 the house is still not weary from sending visitors and workers alike off to toil somewhere, that is her life at the Back River.

She will certainly not send you fleeing during the night either as she is at peace with the people who have lived and died within her walls.

Thomas Shone died at Stanton in 1862, 73 years after being christened at Stanton-on-Hine Heath, Shropshire, England. He gave the farm its name Stanton . His wife Susannah Westlake died at Stanton in 1882.

Thomas Allen Shone died on the farm in 1913. Eliza Cockerill, his wife died in 1920 also at the house. So did her sons Thomas Henry Shone (1891), Henric Stanton Shone (1956), Albert Charles Shone (1881).

More recently, Helen McDiarmid (2009), and Sam Stanton (sheepdog. Rtd, 2010).

The Stanton work calendar was suspended for a few days in July so that time off could be arranged and then enjoyed. Where would be the perfect place to rest up and recharge? Not the warm hills of a tropical island.

No, not at all! Cradle mountain is the answer, of course.

They have log fires, mist, rain and snow — nature at its best. A bit like Stanton.