SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (AP) – The organizers of a local food processing plant are trying to lure more farmers from the fields into the kitchen.

Two years after launching a program to spur new business and support agriculture in the area, the Western Massachusetts Food Processing Center is trying to convince more farmers to turn their fresh crops into products that have a longer shelf life.

“We’re giving them the resources to sell their products to local markets and specialty food stores,” said Herb Heller, the center’s program manager.

The Greenfield-based nonprofit center offers fledgling cooks all the trappings of a commercial kitchen: industrial sized mixers, kettles and ovens that make production and packaging easier and faster than it can be done at home. The facility also has dry, cold and frozen storage space to keep raw ingredients and finished products.

“It’s one thing to make a batch of strawberry jam at home on the stovetop, it’s another thing to do 40 gallons at a time,” Heller said.

And that’s exactly the idea that Emily Oppegard has.

During the three years she’s been managing the Quonquont Farm in Whately, Oppegard has been thinking about boiling the farm’s apples, peaches and blueberries into jams and jellies.

She’s tinkered with a few recipes in her own kitchen, and now she’s putting a business plan together to make the preserves on a larger level and be able to sell them.

“I want people to take away something form the farm that will last a long time, or that they can give as a gift,” Oppegard said.

She said she was nervous about negotiating the bureacracy of getting state regulations on her own. But the food processing center promises to give her the tools she needs to start a business along with a place to cook.

The processing center is an offshoot of Franklin County’s Community Development Corp., which gives loans, work space, advice and support to startup businesses in the area.

Members of the center become automatic members of the CDC, and are able to tap into the agencies resources.

“I don’t know yet if this is a reasonable enterprise,” she said. “But I’d like to try. And the center is giving me the confidence and help to do it.”

The center now has about 25 members. Some are farmers, others are entrepreuneurs turning locally grown crops into processed products.

Heller’s push to get more farmers to join will be good for local agriculture and the local economy. He said he’s trying to attract growers from New Hampshire, Vermont, New York and Connecticut.

“This gives farmers the opportunity to add value to their crops, and it also helps the economy by putting new products in stores,” Heller said.

The center is open 24 hours, seven days a week, so the budding chefs schedule their work time so they’re not working elbow-to elbow with someone else.

“I have a guy who comes in a 2 a.m. to make his bean cakes,” Heller said. “I never see him, but he’s got a good business going.”

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On the Net: http://www.fccdc.org/

AP-ES-01-01-04 1207EST