Here, they found freedom and some of the best soil on earth. Around Moorland, Barnum, and Clare, Irish names quickly started to dominate the early plat books.

Near midway between Moorland and Barnum, on what is now Furrow Avenue, brothers John and Edmund Walsh scraped together enough money to purchase some 226 acres of farmland in September 1870. They must have hoped and prayed that it would be worth the worrisome price tag of $14.36 per acre.

Back then, $14 was a lot tougher to come by — perhaps as hard as $14,000 today.

Several generations and more than 150 years later, the farm remains in the Walsh family. Kevin Walsh is now the owner and the Walsh family turned out in force when the farm earned Heritage Farm status from the Iowa Farm Bureau and Iowa Department of Agriculture at the 2021 Iowa State Fair.

Kevin Walsh and his late wife, Mary Ellen, raised six children on the farm: Pat, Karen, Bob, Tom, Dee and Anne.

“I grew up on that farm and so did my dad,” recalled daughter Anne Condon. “My brother Bob and his wife Andrea farm that farm now.”

She and her siblings, Condon said, learned wonderful values helping on the farm and from watching the way their parents lived their lives.

“Mom and Dad taught us that you have to work hard,” Condon said. “There’s no free hand-outs. If you want something, you have to work hard for it.”

Of course, with Irish families, they are always there to help one another.

Bob Walsh and wife Andrea are working to pass on those values to their son, who has joined the family farm operation this year.

“It gets hard with all the big farmers around, but we’re trying to help our son, the same way Bob’s dad helped us,” Andrea Walsh said.

It’s been that way from the beginning, with Walsh members taking an active role in their community.

Anne Condon recalls her grandparents, Leo and Catherine Walsh, as always wanting to be a part of whatever was going on with the family and community.

“When they moved off the farm, they moved into Barnum, and I believe my grandfather was mayor of Barnum for awhile,” Condon said. “He went to all of the sporting events. I don’t think it mattered if his grandkids were playing or not. He used to just go down and watch basketball, or whatever was going on.”

Condon’s brother Bob Walsh has great memories of his grandfather working on the farm, despite the fact that he had just one arm.

“He lost his arm in a corn picker accident, but he was still a hard worker, he was a trooper,” Bob Walsh said. “My dad had just gotten back from the service — he served in the Korean War — and it was after that my grandfather lost his arm.”

No matter that a hoe is harder to use with just one arm, clean fields were a big priority for his grandfather, according to Bob Walsh.

“He was always a weed man,” Bob Walsh said. “Back in the day, you didn’t have spray so you pulled them.”

When Bob Walsh and his wife Andrea, who had grown up in town in Boone, joined the farm, Bob’s mother, Mary Ellen Walsh, had some sage advice for her new daughter-in-law.

“She would tell me not to do too much work on the farm because I would be stuck doing it,” Andrea Walsh said with a smile in her voice. “I wish I would have taken her advice, because every year I seem to learn to do more and more.”

Fortunately, there’s another generation coming along to join the effort.

Bob and Andrea have two children. Daughter Morgan is studying agriculture at Iowa Central Community College and enjoys working with the cow-calf operation that is part of the Walsh farm. Son Nathan graduated from Iowa Central and works in precision agriculture for K.C. Nielsen. In addition to his full-time job, Nathan has now joined the family farm operation and is cash renting a portion of the farm for the first time this year.

“He is just kind of getting his feet wet this year, using our equipment,” mom Andrea Walsh said.

They know it’s not easy for the younger generation to get established in farming, but by working together, they hope to keep family farm tradition going strong.

The brothers John and Edmund Walsh who started it all in 1870 would surely approve.