It revolutionized the sugarcane industry. Now, the planting machine returns home to Ascension.

A classic sugarcane planting machine — one particular of 154 designed by the Louisianan whose invention ended cane-planting’s back again-breaking hand labor — has been brought back residence to Ascension Parish, where by it was developed virtually 60 a long time back.

Having the device again to its roots has been a labor of love by the Walet farming family of Loreauville, which located the outdated planter on their land, concealed and overgrown by vines. The Ascension Parish Sheriff’s Office introduced the cane planter property by truck and trailer, then put in a 12 months restoring it, and the River Street African American Museum in Donaldsonville will exhibit it in the future.

And, just as important, has been the input of Leonard Julien Jr., the 80-calendar year-outdated son of the inventor, who has been in a position to view the machine’s restoration above the last calendar year and deliver details about its design and style to the inmate trustees who “sandblasted it, re-blasted it and primed and painted it,” reported Julien.

The sugarcane planter was invented and patented by his father, Leonard Julien Sr., who farmed sugarcane in the neighborhood of Modeste in the vicinity of Donaldsonville and patented and designed his devices, with the aid of his brother, Harold, in the machine store of a Donaldsonville mechanical engineer named John Wiggins.

“Just one of the devices planted a lot more cane in a working day than 12 males could,” Julien reported. “We used to plant it by hand. I did it.”

Ascension Parish Sheriff Bobby Webre said that when he heard about the efforts to convey the outdated cane planter house and again in the limelight, he understood it would be a very good project, providing precious vehicle mechanic competencies to inmate trustees.

“It was a year’s task,” Webre mentioned. “It was down to the bare steel.”

The planter, designed in 1965, can’t be operated anymore. In excess of time, winters froze and broke the motor block, Julien Jr. stated.

But it seems to be in ship-form now, painted its primary dazzling crimson.

It was Kathe Hambrick, founder of the River Road African American Museum, who first acquired of the cane planter.

She bought a contact from Amaryllis Walet, whose late husband, Herman Walet, had farmed with the device on his land in the vicinity of New Iberia for 35 decades.

Amaryllis mentioned her son uncovered the sugarcane planter hidden in the fields, and she understood it belonged to history.

In 1999, her husband donated a different of his sugarcane planters to the River Highway African American Museum soon after he and his spouse observed an show about its inventor Leonard Julien Sr.

That sugarcane planter can now be observed at the West Baton Rouge Museum in Port Allen, the place it was moved a couple of years back to be housed in a protecting tractor drop, Hambrick reported.

A tractor get rid of will also be constructed at the River Highway African American Museum for the recently observed and restored cane planter, when it truly is moved to the Donaldsonville museum in the near upcoming.

“It revolutionized the sugarcane business,” said Hambrick.

At some point, Farmer Walet of New Iberia had to exchange grabber-like products on the machine that would open and close to pull the sugarcane stalks into a chute to be dropped into the furrows of the area.

The devices were operated by a spring that stopped being created at some point, so the farmer replaced them with non-moving items that resemble hands, identified as rakes, Julien Jr. stated.

“I’m likely to have the first parts designed and set back again on the device,” Julien Jr. mentioned, “built from my father’s unique sample.”