WBR Museum hosts Sugarfest Oct. 6

PORT ALLEN - What began in 1995 as an event to celebrate the 200th anniversary of sugar making in Louisiana has now become an annual event for the West Baton Rouge Museum known as SugarFest.

The festival will be held on Sunday, October 6 from 11 a.m. - 4 p.m.

The event, in its 18th year, was named a Southeast Tourism Society Top Twenty Event two years in a row.

Admission is free.

There will be fun, food and entertainment for the whole family. Watch folk artists demonstrate 19th century crafts and Louisiana musicians to perform Dixieland Jazz, Spirituals, and Folk Music while touring the museum's permanent exhibitions illustrating sugar plantation life.

See bousillage making, flint, knapping, praline candy making, mule driven cane grinding, cane syrup boiling, bee keeping, blacksmithing, file making, rope making, spinning and weaving, wood carving, tin type photography and more.

Visit the c.1830 Aillet House, three cabins from Allendale Plantation, the Arbroth Plantation Mercantile Store, and a 22-foot working model of a sugar mill.

Walk the grounds to pet farm animals, and ride in an old-fashioned hay wagon. Chew on a stalk of sugar cane, ride a train around the museum grounds and participate in an old fashioned Cake Walk.

Local restaurants and businesses will provide food available for purchase. Items on the menu include jambalaya, lemonade, snow cones, cotton candy, cracklin's and more.

The West Baton Rouge Historical Association will have Plantation Fair Dinners, cookies, cakes, and candies for sale, too. There's even a sweets contest with celebrity judges.

The museum is located at 845 N. Jefferson Avenue in Port Allen.

For more information, please call 225-336-2422 x15 or visit www.westbatonrougemuseum.com.