Sugar cane was planted in January and February and harvested from mid-October to December. The planting season was followed by miscellaneous tasks such as the cultivation of corn, the collection of wood, and the maintenance of levees and drainage canals. The grinding season (roulaison in French) started in early November, at the latest. According to Follett (The Sugar masters), “steam power profoundly shaped the sugar industry, but its economic success rested primarily on the mass importation of African American bondspeople to Louisiana. The seasonal nature of sugar production imposed a forbidding regime on the slaves (…), gravely affected slave women’s capacity to bear children, and it left an appalling legacy of death in its wake.” Sugar production was a dangerous process, involving the handling of boiling liquids. Sugar cane juice was heated in a series of open kettles and pans called the "Jamaica Train". The slaves poured juice from boiler to boiler with long-handled ladles. This old dangerous method of sugar production did not end until the 1840s when Norbert Rillieux (1806-1894), an African American born from a French farmer and a free woman of color, invented a sugar processing evaporator composed of multiple pans stacked inside a vacuum chamber. This machine called multiple-effect evaporation was patented in 1843. It improved the sugar refining process, saved time and money in the making of sugar, and protected lives.