The Irish Traditions of Farmersville are something much deeper than a summer festival and St. Patrick’s Day.  It’s a celebration of the settlers who fled the 19th Century potato famine on the Emerald Isle and tamed the prairie here to push hunger out of their lives.  The legacy of those individuals who planted the seeds of today’s farm economy in the Panhandle is alive and well.  One great example is the James W. Whalen Family Farm three miles southeast of Farmersville.  It has been certitifed by the Illinois Department of Agriculture as a member of the Sesquicentennial Farm Program, staying within the same family for 150 years.   .  The fourth, fifth and sixth generations of the family currently go to work on the same soil that James Whalen’s great grandfather Martin Brown did a century and a half ago.  Whalen and his three sons, Brad, Bill and Aaron and his grandson Rylan all are continuing the family tradition.      Martin Brown  took on 137 acres initially and added more land in 1873.  It was no easy task to make it a farm for the long haul.. As the homestead was marshy prairie.