MAGNUM OPUS EST:
HOW AND WHY WE FARM

For those who want a deeper dive into our farming philosophy, this one is intentionally not a bulleted list; for all others, the TL;DR:

Magnum Opus Estates is a small, old school, granddad-style farm, with multiple species living together in the whole circle of life to create a complete ecosystem, pursuing the ideals of regenerative, permaculture, and organic agriculture. Our mission is to provide nutrient-dense food to premium and niche markets and to provide high quality livestock and plants to homesteaders and small farmers.

Opus est is a Latin idiom that literally means, “There is work.” But to a Roman mind, opus est means, “There is a need,” because if there is work, you need to do it, and if there is a need, well, you’d best get to work. Today, regardless of which route you take to get there, we see widespread agreement that Americans face a great need for better food, and it warrants great work. It’s why we farm, and we’ve seen great demand from butchers and chefs in Nashville.

Why? Our ducks and chickens roam the entire farm. We don’t have cows yet, but we source the grass-fed milk for our hogs from a family farm a horse-ride away from ours. We build our land with compost, and keep track of our soil microbiome with microscopes. We channel waste biomass into our Black Soldier Fly Larvae. We’ve graded the whole farm to collect runoff in our pond via vitrified clay—not plastic—pipes. Where plastic is unavoidable, we use food-grade HDPE, not PVC, and we off-gas it for months before use to relentlessly minimize the VOCs our ecosystem has to bio-remediate. Food is literally a matter of life and death, and we take both seriously on our farm. We’re feeding ourselves as well as your families.

Moreover, we have not yet begun to fight. Soon will we grow duckweed on our pond, which is 40% protein and which will allow us to recycle the Nitrogen from our runoff into hog feed. Additionally, harvesting the duckweed will invariably also harvest minnow eggs, snails, baby crawdads, etc., all of which will raise the Omega-3s in our pork and lard. We will plant both fruit and Honey Locust trees this winter, to generate both apple drops and Honey Locust pods with which to finish hogs. In spring, we will trap and propagate swarms of wild, native bees. We are grateful to our consultants and allies.

Many thanks to Takota Coen of Building Your Homestead in Ferintosh, Alberta, whose team created our farm Master Plan; to Kevin Krause of Liberty Trace Farm in Hampshire, TN, for teaching us about building the health of our soil with the cunning use of soil microbiome and microscopes; and to Laura Jensen, AMBA President, of Jensen Reserve and the Meishan Preservation herd in Loganville, GA, who taught us almost everything we know about growing pigs. Many thanks also you, our community.

—The Patton Family and Our Amazing Staff