MAYFIELD, Ky. — It is Monday. The room is crowded, more so than usual. Dozens of people seeking employment. Most of them are people like Tina Kradenpoth.

"I don't know what's out there for a 50-year-old woman," she said, taking a break from filling out online paperwork.

A decade short of retirement, Kradenpoth is starting over. She worked at Ferry-Morse Seed Company for seven years and was let go Friday.

"I got a call from a friend saying I needed to come by, pick up my packet," she said. "They were closing the plant."

The seed company, based in Fulton, Kentucky, let go nearly 200 people Friday. Employees returning from lunch were handed a letter telling them their services were no longer needed.

It came on the same day Ferry-Morse decided to sell the company to Plantation Products.

"I thought it was wrong of them not let us know this was a possibility," she said.

Under federal law, those laid off will be paid for the next 60 days. They will also receive health insurance, through Cobra, during that period.

It means Kradenpoth and others have a safety net of just two months. Mayfield's Career Center said by noon, 178 people had walked through their doors and about a third of them were the laid off workers from Ferry-Morse.

Tina Kradenpoth said she worries about the job market but not about the job seekers, her friends and co-workers.

"We'll make it. We're tough people."

An informational meeting to help with job placement will be held May 24 beginning at 9 a.m. at the Pontotoc Civic Center in Fulton.

It is being sponsored in part by West Kentucky's Workforce Investment Board and Kentucky's Career Center.

Ferry-Morse declined to comment for this story.