As we’ve seen so far, mother nature has had a mind of her own when it comes to the arrival of spring but the President of the St. Pierre Museum says it’s putting a damper on the harvesting of sugar water in preparation for the Sugaring Off Festival.
Rolly Gagne explains sugar water flows in a very narrow window every year and explains in order for it to flow they require nighttime lows to be slightly below freezing but the daytime highs to be above zero.
"It’s going to be excellent like usual the only thing is, is that mother nature has played a trick on us today, this week and the last two-three months actually because it’s just freezing too hard right now so we’re not able to harvest our sugar water like what we would want to. Unfortunately, it will probably be ready to go next week but we were hoping to have the sugar water ready to boil during the Saturday and Sunday." 
Gagne adds from what he’s seeing in the forecast, they would be good to go for next weekend but says they will make it work.
"This weekend I think we’ll be ok. We’ve got everything on the go but the only problem is the harvesting of the sugar water. We’ve got maple syrup, we still got some maple syrup left over from last year and also we have our Quebec maple syrup that we bring in for the Festival Du Voyageur that we’re going to be using this time around so we’re good."
Gagne says they have a great weekend planned with traditional French Canadian food, demonstrations from the La Verendrye soldiers, local music and of course their famous maple taffy on the snow.
He adds the vandalism incident on Wednesday night where the culprits came in and spilled maple syrup and other liquids all over the floor will not affect this weekend's festival. Gagne says it's been cleaned up and they are ready for the festival to begin.
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Mon, Apr 22, 7:30 PM
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