Hard work is way of life

By LORI BERGLUND Farm News writer

In the mid- to late-19th century, the rich soil of Webster County attracted immigrants by the hundreds who had a love of the land. A large share of them came from Ireland, hoping not to know famine again.

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