Butternut vertical antenna trouble

I have a butternut HF6V vertical antenna that until recently was working very well. It was installed many years ago with only occasional issues- bad capacitor, broken guys,etc. I had noticed in the last several months not as many signals but since I’ve not been very active on the air it really hadn’t pushed me to really investigate.
 With winter fast approaching in the northland, I decided to check this antenna out a little more. Imagine my surprise when the antenna analyzer showed very high SWR and the ohmmeter basically shows open..this summer has been very wet and consequently I neglected trimming a perimeter around the base of the antenna like I normally Would.
  After trimming around the base I found the shield ground broke plus several secondary grounds to the metal base and ground rods  also broke.the most obvious problem and the reason for the damage was the base,which is a 20x24 metal base was sinking and covered with mud/grass from some animal which had dug underneath it and deposited all the wet ground on top of it.
  This location is very good for a ground mounted vertical because of the swampy location which makes it all the more surprising an animal would try to burrow underneath..Maybe when it was drier?? Whatever- after some excavation and filling in I was able to repair all the bad ground connections and test first with the ohmmeter then analyzer. It was now a happy working vertical antenna again with lots of signals .
 My winter operating now can happen on not only this antenna but several others which I also tested.
73- Tim