General News

Jack fruits are native to South Asia. Its fruit is the largest tree-borne fruit in the world, reaching as much as 80 pounds in weight, up to 36 inches long, and 20 inches in diameter. Here you can see a small jack fruit is much larger than my head. Here one of the students climbs the tree at the farm to retrieve the fruit. Waiting anxiously for the scream from above "Incoming!!!"... And success! We harvested nine using a screen to catch them and used them at Legacy school in a number of ways below.

A couple weeks ago we took the students to an organic sustainable farm located several miles north of Legacy Institute as part of their Ag class. Here Jeff Rutherford (owner) explains how Fair Earth Farm works with its many types of vegetables, fruit trees, and animals grown together in tandem as in a natural environment.

Queen Sirikit on a visit to Russia in 2007 On August 12, 2012, Queen Sirikit of Thailand will turn 80 years old.  Thailand will celebrate her birthday with the usual […]

The sunflower is named for its ability to follow the sun in the course of a day. They can grow to be 12 feet tall under the right conditions. The students and I enjoyed watching our little "Sunflower" grow to 6 foot and live a happy, healthy, and full life.

“Thousands of people shouted "Long Live the King" on Saturday evening as His Majesty made a special boat trip to Nonthaburi province. The monarch, accompanied by Her Majesty the Queen and Her Royal Highness Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn, left Siriraj Hoispital’s pier late in the afternoon and boarded the Royal Thai Navy ship Angsana. The Royal Family then journeyed upriver to Koh Kret in Nonthaburi to inspect riverside communities affected by last year's floods...

Aung San Suu Kyi, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and once one of the most famous political prisoners in modern history, is now traveling the world on behalf of the government and people of her native Burma (Myanmar). She had been under house arrest for 15 of the last 21 years. Now her political party, called the National League for Democracy, is part of the Myanmar government and recently won 41 of the 43 vacant seats in the lower house of the Myanmar parliament. The military backed party still controls most of parliament, but her election and the inclusion of the NLD in government signals changes to come...

Who knew a little grain of rice took so much time and effort to produce! It is a small grain that is fairly inexpensive and unobtrusive but a staple food in most Asian countries. In late May at Jet Rye (3-1/2 acres), 30 minutes north of the school, we planted rice the Thai style or the wet patty process. As you will see below a full days work of tilling the ground, flooding the patties, pulling rice seedlings, and finally transplanting the rice plants in the two patties takes quite a bit of effort...

Friday May 25, King Bhumibol Adulyadej, accompanied by Her Majesty Queen Sirikit and HRH Princess Sirindhorn, left the SiriratHospital where he has been under medical care since September 2009, to travel by motorcade to the old capital of Ayutthaya...

A few months ago I saw one of my students holding something in his hand that looked like this:

What does Jet Rye mean anyway? Well, it is the latest endeavor of our sustainable agriculture plan; Jet meaning 7 and Rye is a plot of land which equals about 2/5 of an acre. This plot of land, located about 30 minutes northwest of Legacy, we have reserved for the staple food items like rice, corn, soybeans, and peanuts mainly because it is the largest plot we have to work with. Graciously a friend of the school has let us use his land because he cannot farm it at the present time.

In order to travel to Burma for the Spring Holy Days, I asked Mr. Brian Drawbaugh if he would be willing to come over and hold services at the Legacy School for COG members and students who might have remained at Legacy for the school break. He kindly agreed and flew over to help. Here is a brief write-up about the Passover and Days of Unleavened Bread in Thailand: