How Site #1 Nearly Defeated Me Before I Even Got Started - Part 2
Blackberry Farm Setup – Part 2
One Step Forward, Two WiFi Extenders Back (and One Ruined Rain Barrel)
After Day One at North Forest Farms left me with windburn, sore legs, and a growing list of failures—including a chipper that smoked itself out and a WiFi extender I accidentally mailed back inside the return box—I woke up on Day Two clinging to whatever was left of my motivation.
I didn’t even start in the field. First thing in the morning, I drove into town and registered the farm. North Forest Farms is now officially on paper. That small but satisfying act gave me just enough of a mental reset to think maybe—just maybe—this day would go differently.
Back at Site #1, I turned my attention to a task I knew I could finish: installing the deer barrier. After all the work getting the area cleared, I wasn’t about to lose our future blackberry rows to hungry deer. I strung up the fishing line, tightened the netting, and created a perimeter. It’s not permanent. It’s not even pretty. But it’s functional—and it’s the kind of thing that made the entire space finally start to look like a farm in progress.
Then came a small victory: I planted three Chester blackberry bushes. Just three. But after everything that had gone sideways the day before, it felt like digging those holes and placing those root bundles in the ground was a moment of hard-won peace. I watered them in, stepped back, and allowed myself a moment to feel like I was actually building something.
But that didn’t last long.
Running on minimal sleep and still overwhelmed from the series of misfires, I looked at the rain barrel I had placed in a low trench the day before. Water had been flowing into the trench steadily from runoff—it was basically a miniature stream at that point. And in my foggy state, it seemed logical that the rain barrel was sitting too low and needed drainage to avoid flooding. So I grabbed a drill and popped a few holes in the bottom.
Yes. You read that right. I drilled holes in the bottom of a rain barrel.
It wasn’t until I watched water stream out from underneath that I realized how completely backwards that was. I stood there staring at it in disbelief—like, what just happened? This was one of those mistakes you only make when your brain is operating on fumes. I had taken one of the most useful off-grid tools and turned it into a glorified sieve. One step forward, one drilled hole back.
Still, I was holding out hope for redemption. I had delayed my departure from the Finger Lakes specifically to wait for the Amazon delivery of a new WiFi extender—the replacement for the one I had carefully prepped and accidentally returned inside a waterproof electrical box. This was supposed to be the fix that allowed me to get the RainPoint smart irrigation hub online, powered by solar, and connected to the system I planned to monitor remotely.
The package finally arrived in the afternoon. I unboxed it, climbed the ladder again, set it up exactly how I had tested weeks ago… and the signal didn’t even reach the hub. I repositioned it. Moved the mesh units. Changed outlets. Nothing helped.
And then—just to add insult to exhaustion—the unit just died. It stopped responding entirely. It wasn’t even worth troubleshooting anymore. I had extended my trip, rearranged my schedule, and bent over backwards to make it work. And now I stood there with another dead piece of equipment, no signal, and still no way to test or monitor the irrigation system I’d spent all weekend preparing to install.
There was no dramatic moment of defeat. Just that slow-burning frustration where you’re so far beyond tired, all you can do is quietly pack your tools and stare at the dirt for a while.
Starting a farm—even on a small scale—is deeply humbling. It’s not just hauling equipment or clearing brush. It’s dealing with every single thing going wrong when you’ve planned it all out to go right. It’s watching your carefully laid timeline dissolve into Plan C, D, or “maybe next weekend.”
But it’s also progress. Messy, frustrating, slow-as-hell progress.
And those three Chester blackberries? They’re still standing. That’s more than I can say for the WiFi extender.
More updates soon—from the next round of experiments, fixes, and the long road toward building North Forest Farms one (painfully honest) weekend at a time.
Here’s what I did accomplish:
✔ Registered the farm
✔ Built the deer barrier
✔ Planted three blackberry plants
Here’s what I didn’t:
✘ Finish setting up the irrigation system
✘ Test the RainPoint hub remotely
✘ Keep my rain barrel functional
✘ Maintain my sanity
