Some farms come down through a family like a name. Herr Farms, in Warren, Indiana, did not. Bruce and Twilla Herr started from nothing but the wish to work the ground, and before they were even married they were running sixty sows, farrow to finish, for about two years. That was the whole operation. That was the plan, for a while anyway.
Then an opportunity came along in poultry, and things moved the way they sometimes do in agriculture. "The next thing I knew, we was setting posts, we was building a barn," is how it gets described. Today Herr Farms produces fertile eggs for hatching, along with corn, soybeans, alfalfa, and hay. And in a turn that still makes the family smile a little, they also own Dash 90 Wines, a farm winery that sits right there on the place. As they put it, theirs is as farm winery as you can get.
Their son Zane is part of the operation now, farming alongside his parents and thinking about what the farm looks like when they step back. That is a specific kind of pressure, and anybody in northern Indiana or northwest Ohio who has watched a family hand off a farm knows it. Nothing is guaranteed just because you built it. Being first generation means there is no long track record to lean on, only the one you are making.
Here's Bruce, Twilla, and Zane Herr of Herr Farms and Dash 90 Wines, in their own words:
The Phone Gets Answered
Ask the Herrs what they need from a bank and the first answer is not a rate. It is a phone call.
"In agriculture, sometimes things work pretty quick. We have to be able to pick up the phone and call and get a hold of somebody we know," they say. "First Bank of Berne's always right there. They're always, they always answer the phone."
That sounds simple until you have lived it. A load moves early. A supplier changes terms. A barn needs a decision this week, not next quarter. When the answer has to travel through a call center and up through three levels of review, the window closes before anyone gets back to you. When the person on the other end of the line already knows what your operation looks like, the conversation starts in the middle instead of at the beginning.
There is a reason first generation farmers in particular feel that difference. Growing an operation from sixty sows to a poultry barn, row crops, hay ground, and now a winery means asking a lender to underwrite something that keeps changing shape. The Herrs have been direct about what makes that possible.
"I rely heavily on a rapport with my banker," they say. "If I don't trust them and I can't have an open conversation, I'm not going to do business with you."
That is not a small thing to say out loud. It is also a fair standard. Trust is built by the small stuff, the returned calls and the honest answers about what will and will not work, long before it gets tested by anything large.
A Team That Has To Be On Board
The Herrs describe the farm's next chapter in terms of generations rather than years. Bruce and Twilla are looking toward retirement. Zane is looking at a farm he wants to keep going, for himself and for his own kids. That kind of transition takes more than a good year. It takes financing that fits a plan measured in decades.
"When you're on a farm and you're wanting to do the second and third generation, you have to have a banking institution that's on your team," they say. "You have to be forward thinking, think long term, and they have to be on board or it just won't work."
Building an operation that can carry a second and third generation usually means a series of steps: ground, a barn, a piece of equipment, a facility for something new. Each step has to make sense on its own and still fit the larger picture. Working with a community bank whose ag lenders live in the same counties means those conversations happen with people who understand what the local ground yields, what a poultry contract looks like, and what it takes for someone starting out with no inherited acres to get a foothold.
The winery followed the same pattern. Dash 90 Wines was a new venture attached to a working farm, which is not the tidiest thing to walk into a lender's office and describe. The Herrs say getting started with it was firsthand and seamless, easy to do. For a family that had already built a poultry operation out of nothing, that reception mattered.
Where the Money Stays
The Herrs keep coming back to something that has less to do with banking than with geography. They see the bank at the 4-H fair. They see it at church. They see it around them.
"So when you're working with the bank, you know, all that money is just staying here," they say. "It's local."
That is the part they tie to values rather than terms. Zane has spoken about wanting people around him who support helping the community and helping the farm grow, for his sake and for the generations after him. The Herrs put it plainly: it is their community too, and they want everybody to be successful, because if they are, then the community is successful and it just makes a better place to live.
There is one line from the family that lands harder than any of it: "The logo and the shirt don't make the man wearing it. Find somebody that you can trust and work with." For the Herrs, that search ended close to home, with a community bank that answers the phone and stays for the long conversation about what the farm becomes next.
If your operation is still taking shape and you want a lender who will think in generations with you, the agribusiness bankers at First Bank of Berne are worth a conversation. Growers just getting established can also start with the bank's options for beginning farmers, and families weighing a new barn or added ground can talk through financing for land and facilities.