Woke to a balmy 16F yesterday morning. I found that the tank heaters weren't working in the animal waters so I had to troubleshoot it and get them working. It turned out to be the temp control block so after changing it out the heaters kicked on and later in the day the waters were back to liquid. My morning was spent dealing with the mess in the house. R's room got cleaned and a number of things ended up in the living room, right in the way of walking. It took a while but I finally got the pile sorted and a nice clear walking path finally.
The sun finally hit the sheep pen after noon and I took the opportunity to go out and fix the pallet fence. I had not given it enough support initially so it had fallen over with the animals pushing on the pallets.
I only needed the two t-posts to support them enough. I then wired the posts to the pallets to keep them from moving. My big concern was when we get snow, they would have walked right over the pallets if they were still laying down like that.
Since it has been 16F at night the celery was frozen solid. I had hoped that it wouldn't get so cold but it did and my row cover did nothing. I ended up waiting until after picking the boys up from school to start on the celery which meant the sun was shining on the rows a bit so I had to be quick with my cutting. I started with just one bunch, hacked it off in the garden and hauled it to the kitchen where I cut it up into chunks.
I filled trays as I cut until each was full.
The poor celery in the garden standing frozen still mid day.
You can see the ice on the celery. This made things rather nice for the freeze dryer since the celery was already frozen it took WAY less time for the drying process to start.
Each tray got packed and a couple I had to add tray liners to the top of to keep the leaves from blowing around the chamber.
I got through all the green celery but still needed more to finish the last tray so I went and cut down one of the Russian celery which finished off the last tray nicely.
The Kraken played Tampa and by the skin of their teeth won finally. After they won the boys and I watched last weeks Battlebots. 
Halloween today and the boys get to wear their costumes to school. I have to cut up the rest of the celery and get it in the freezer until the freeze dryer is open for another batch. Frozen produce on the deck needs to get tossed to the sheep, some squash I didn't get anything done with. Later today I will likely take the boys into
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