BERNE — Robert Weiss probably knew Carl Baranishyn Jr. as well as anybody did at the end of his life, before he was shot Friday in what has been ruled suicide by cop.

“I can say I like Carl without saying I’m much like Carl,” he said. Weiss describes himself as a licensed professional engineer, the father of five children, devoted to his wife and family. He describes Baranyshin as a jack-of-all-trades, a believer in free love, and an alcoholic who was largely deserted by his family.

“I’m not a free lover; I’m not covered in tattoos,” he said.

The two were brought together because of a farm on West Mountain in Berne. “I was sick of cubicles, corporations, and corruption,” said Weiss, a retired automation engineer from Long Island. “I wanted to farm.”

He bought the 46-acre farm and another 120 on the other side of Partridge Run. He is raising three different kinds of grains, and 10 kinds of vegetables — “anything that will grow,” he said.

“Carl was a grandchild of a family that lived here in the 1960s,” said Weiss, talking this week from the farmhouse on High Point Road. Baranishyn’s father, Carl Sr., moved back to the farm late in life after a career on Long Island in sales and consulting before moving to Florida in 2011.

“Carl Jr. never lived here full-time until Carl Sr. moved to Florida,” said Weiss.

His father had first rented out the house and later squatters moved there, Weiss said. “They trashed the place.”

Carl Baranishyn Jr. had grown up on Long Island, “boating and fishing in the sound,” said Weiss, and lived in Pennsylvania for the last 30 years where his jobs included firefighting, ambulance driving, and running heavy equipment like cranes for construction.

“He developed a very severe alcoholism problem,” said Weiss. After Baranishyn Jr. was arrested for driving under the influence, his father set him up to live on the farm in Berne, said Weiss. (According to a report in The Sentinel, a newspaper covering Cumberland County in Pennsylvania, on March 9, 2012, Carl Baranishyn, then 47, of Mechanicsburg, was charged with driving under the influence at the highest level of alcohol.)

Meanwhile, Weiss was pursuing his retirement dream of farming and, looking through available real estate, discovered the West Mountain farm. He insisted that Baranishyn move out of the house he was buying before the closing.

“He had no place to go and no money,” said Weiss. “He was so drunk he could hardly walk or talk.”

Carl Baranishyn Sr. said his son could move onto the eight acres of land across the street from the farmhouse that he and his wife, Nancy, Carl Jr.’s stepmother, owned, said Weiss. “I allowed him to move his things out. His dad and the real estate agent pitched in.”

The property changed hands on July 8, 2015. It took Baranishyn Jr. several days to move his things across the street. He set up a camp in the woods there and lived in a tent with his worldly goods piled nearby.

“Over the year, I talked to Carl. I liked him. I felt for him. He was beset by a lot of maladies. He had Crohn’s disease and severe dyslexia. And he had injuries from construction work — no nerves in his left hand. Jeepers,” said Weiss. “He was also a nudist and a free lover…He got dealt a rough hand.”

Weiss also said, “He had a way of saying what he’d done without saying what he did wrong.”

When the weather turned cold, “somebody gave him a free trailer,” and Baranishyn moved in, said Weiss. He hunkered down in the small living space. “He was a couch potato,” said Weiss. “That was all Carl had.”

Weiss said this week that he plans to call Baranishyn’s stepmother to see if she wants him to clean up her land where Baranishyn had left all of his things.

“He didn’t have anyplace to go,” Weiss said. “I let him receive his mail at my place. This was his ancestral property.”

Baranishyn made his own wine, fermenting fruit in large jars. “His Grandma taught him to make hooch in his teenage years. He gave me a glass to drink…When he had money, he’d down vodka; when he didn’t, he’d drink hooch,” Weiss said.

“I’d hire him for 25 bucks an hour; if he was too drunk, I’d send him home,” said Weiss.

“He wouldn’t do things to help himself but, for someone else, he’d do anything,” said Weiss, giving an example. “One time, my truck blew out something in the engine. Carl dropped everything. He worked 10-hour days to help me get my truck running.”

Another time, Baranishyn helped him — “for four days straight” — dismantle a barn that had been torn down and left in the field.

“I let him have access to the garage for power and tools. He never stole anything or messed up,” said Weiss. And, because Baranishyn didn’t have the money to pay for more storage space, Weiss offered space in a barn to store his household possessions but they remained in the woods.

Baranishyn’s father died in February and Weiss said he was the only family member that still related to him. “Carl’s world was closing in,” he said.

Two days before he died, Baranishyn was working for Weiss on what would turn out to be his last project.

The farmhouse basement was “chock full of random junk,” said Weiss. It was a shambles. I’m German and that doesn’t hold sway.”

Everything was carted out onto the lawn and sorted. “He helped for two days straight. I paid him. He had enough money to get drunk,” said Weiss.

He explained that it wasn’t his intention to help Baranishyn drink. Rather, he’d pay him only when he was sober. “If I could make him sober to get money, I’d do that,” he said.

“When he screwed up his 30-30” — both of the men liked hunting, Weiss said — “I ended up buying it off him; he needed money.”

The tale-end of the cellar-cleaning project was to break up the wooden refuse into pieces that could burn in Weiss’s heating stove.

“He spent an hour on a 15-minute job and it wasn’t a third done,” said Weiss. “He said he was sick with Crohn’s disease. I said, ‘Fine. Go home.’”

Weiss finished the chore himself in five minutes, he said.

“His world was closing in,” he concluded. “I wish I’d been more tolerant….

“Sometimes people are broken,” said Weiss.