Destrehan spring fest halted

After years of holding a spring festival of arts and crafts, Destrehan Plantation has decided to end the event despite high participation for the past few years.

A new and improved Spring Heritage Day will take the festival’s place.

The plantation’s 13th Annual Spring Heritage Day and Civil War Encampment will offer demonstrations of early plantation life, a full Civil War encampment and reenactments, instructions on plantation activities and student presentations.

“We decided to have our spring event as a more educational type of event since our main mission is heritage education,” said Angela Matherne, heritage education coordinator for the plantation. “I think probably we will not be having (the spring festival) in the future. We’re going to do heritage events rather than the arts and crafts festival.”

Matherne said she hopes that the people who usually go to the arts and crafts festival will now choose to go to heritage day.

Spring Heritage Day will take place May 14 for student groups only and May 15 for the general public. Admission will be $5 with a plantation tour available for an additional $5 that will teach the history of Destrehan Plantation and the major role the site played in the history of Louisiana and the U.S.

Schools must pre-register for the event.

Folk life demonstrations at the event include open hearth cooking, herbal healing, blacksmithing, spinning, boussillage construction, weaving, wood carving, quilting, doll making, moss mattress making, indigo dying, carpentry, cabinet making and pottery.

Visitors will also be offered instruction on common activities from early plantation life, such as calligraphy, vintage music and dance, antique toys and bee keeping.
For more information or to register a class for the trip, call Matherne at 985-764-9315.

The event is sponsored by the River Road Historical Society, Azby Foundation, River Region Arts & Humanities Council, Shell Chemical, St. Charles Art Guild and Louisiana Extension Service of LSU Ag Center.