Before the state’s last processor shut down abruptly, Paula Stotts sold free-range chicken to Cafe DiCocoa in Bethel and Paris’ McLaughlin Garden. The Poland Spring Inn had asked about buying chicken for the next summer’s worth of weekend barbecues.

But the closure of Maine’s Pride on Trapp Road in Auburn in November 2004 “devastated a lot of people,” said Stotts, owner of Whispering Winds Farm in Mechanic Falls.

Farmers who raised chicken for meat lost their only state-inspected facility and with it the ability to sell at farmers’ markets or wholesale. So they banded together, raised grant money, formed a co-op and, last fall, bought a mobile processor.

Maine now has a single state-inspected facility again, this time on wheels. Until the Cooperative Poultry Processing nonprofit can change a few quirks of federal law, it’ll be parked and based in Monmouth.

The timing could hardly be better, Stotts said. “Since we’ve had all of this contamination of agri-business products in the news, there’s even greater demand for (locally raised meat). The market is only limited to what the farmers limit it to.”

COOPP, which is still taking new members, will hold a meeting Saturday to get a sense of how many farmers and how many birds they’ll have, before members of the group start approaching large customers again.

Thirty-seven farms have joined so far, paying one-time fees of $100. They’ve hired someone to manage the processor and provide a crew.

The unit is housed in a long, white refrigerated tractor-trailer body. It can process 200 chickens or 147 turkeys a day. Farmers are charged a fee per bird.

Because the state requires an inspector on premises, it’ll likely run two to three days a week starting, tentatively, June 15, Stotts said.

She keeps an open-farm policy so customers can see how the birds are handled and get to know where the food comes from.

“People don’t think beyond the package in Shaw’s or Hannaford,” she said. “My birds are free range. They’re out getting bugs, they’re getting sunshine and it’s that way to the end.”

State Rep. Nancy Smith, D-Monmouth, whose Snafu Acres Dairy Farm is housing the processor for now, said people seem attracted to locally raised meat for three reasons: how the animals are treated, the quality of the product and helping the local economy.

Her farm will raise 500 chickens and 300 turkeys this year.

“Without state inspection, the only way you can sell is direct from your farm,” Smith said. “It’s all about being able to market your product.”