Zach Wagner was sitting in his home office doing bookwork on an April morning when a friend rang his phone with news that would upend his farming operation: His barn was on fire.
“I jumped out, and I looked outside my kitchen window, and I’m like, ‘No, we’re fine,’” Wagner recalled. But his friend clarified that it was the large machine storage barn Wagner rented on Howe Road, about 20 minutes from his home, that was on fire.
By the time the 33-year-old first-generation farmer arrived, it was too late. The barn was gone, reduced to smoldering ruins. Inside were two Case Magnum tractors, a corn planter, a soybean planter and a combine — equipment valued at about $1.4 million based on purchase prices…