Sweeping out the garage is a drag. Avoiding potholes is aggravating. Parking alongside a pile of long-since-cleared snow – now a heap of soiled, black ice – at the grocery store is far from appetizing.

But my, oh my, is that subsoil moisture wonderful for farmers.

“This is good,” said Brenna Wulfkuhle, who farms and ranches on 3,500 acres with her husband, Mark. “The mood in agriculture is probably better than it’s been in quite a while: Prices are up, and we have moisture to begin the season with.

“You don’t turn down moisture in the winter.”

By replenishing ponds, feeding empty creeks and soaking plenty of water into fields, recent storms that dropped snow, sleet and rain on the Lawrence area have done far more than frustrate city residents and businesses.

While some ranchers can find some fault with the moisture’s timing – Mark Wulfkuhle was among those slogging through muddy fields Wednesday to tend to cows – there’s no escaping the benefits of pervasive wetness, said Bill Wood, agriculture agent for K-State Research and Extension in Douglas County.

Wheat already in the ground will find water to drink just beneath the surface, once the plants start growing in a few weeks, he said. Corn planting won’t start for at least another month, and soybeans won’t be entering the ground until May or June.

“At least you go into the year with some moisture in the ground,” Wood said. “At least two of the last three years, it was dry and we could do our fieldwork, but – believe me – most people would rather have moisture than a drought.”

The Wulfkuhles have more than a dozen ponds on the land they own and manage, much of it along the west side of Clinton Lake. Brenna Wulfkuhle has watched happily as the ponds have filled back up, creeks are running again and the lake’s level has begun to rise once again.

Perhaps best of all is all the water that soaked into the ground, she said. Their crops – 400 acres of wheat, plus another 400 acres set aside for corn and another 400 acres for beans – will welcome the moisture, while the Wulfkuhles’ 2,400 acres of pasture also will be primed to green up.

That’s good news for the 500 beef cows and 400 feeder cattle now on site at the Rocking H Ranch.

“A good, wet snow is the best thing you could have,” Brenna Wulfkuhle said. “It soaks in slower.”