I have not looked into Lorawan much. I do think that TTN is extremely interesting and would like to read more about actual installations -- see if there's coverage anywhere around here.

Creating a Lorawan server/gateway is supported by the Zephyr OS that I use for stuff. If I were creating a gateway I'd put the antenna up high, so it has line-of-sight to the nodes. This should give you miles of coverage.

Good luck.