There's an old warehouse at the foot of the Magnolia Bridge on the empty west side of Terminal 91. It's easy to miss, sitting beneath a greenbelt, looking derelict. But on this cold Saturday morning, all the parking spots around it are full.

Bustle fills the warehouse. Seventy five people, maybe more, chip away and green bergs of frozen peas, or unload groceries in pallet-sized boxes, four feet high. Others repack food into smaller boxes and occasionally a forklift darts by, carrying another load.

From above the fray, on a rickety staircase in the corner of the building, it looks like any warehouse scene, but for two things. The "workers" are dressed too nicely to be regulars here where grime and cobwebs are thick between the wall's wooden beams. The other unusual thing about this work crew is the camaraderie. Newbies are teased for tentatively filling boxes. Banter comes easy despite the pace. There is a surplus of goodwill.

"We have a lot of fun. We're not just do-gooders," says Erik Gulmann.

Gulmann, a Ballard Rotarian, has been coming to the Rotary First Harvest for a few years. He and his fellows do this one Saturday a month as part of a process to get food, principally produce, from suppliers and into the hands of the needy. The project was started in 1982 by Puget Sound Rotarians with an idea of charitably redistributing backyard garden crops. Then Washington's industry - one of the most productive in the United States - got involved and the contributions of food went from pounds to tons. The effort to move it all required lots of Rotarians, like Gulmann, who seems meant for the Ballard Rotary. He was born in Denmark and introduced to Rotary by a fisherman friend.

"I have friends I would never have met without this," he says, while he collects empty grocery bags piling up in a corner.

Older faces lined, and young ones, smooth, mix among the boxes, bags and vegetables. Roger Morse, one of the former, and foreman for this crew, charges about with an energy that belies the walking cane he uses to gesture at the diversity of the crowd, leaning over boxes, sorting food; the veterans, the bankers, the retirees, real estate agents and Wall Street Types.

There's Earle," he says, pointing to Leonard Earle, a Ballard Rotarian, standing out in the dusty warehouse in his white Ballard sweatshirt. "He's a great guy - very active in his church, Morse says. Then, as an afterthought, "There're atheists here too. You know...everybody."

Everybody here volunteers, except for Northwest Harvest employees. Northwest Harvest owns and operates the warehouse. Like RFH, they are in the business of supplying food to the more than 300 food banks in Washington State. They are one link further along in the food donation supply chain. Rotary First Harvest essentially finds food and gets it to partner organizations like Northwest Harvest, who then take it to food banks where it gets to people and families who need it. There is overlap. Northwest Harvest and individual food banks all depend on their own food drives as well as RFH. And Rotary First Harvest doesn't just broker food. They also supply the labor to break it down, sort it into family sized units, and move it.

"Money, arms and muscles," Earle Leonard says, describing the Rotary engine inside the First Harvest machine. Leonard is a former president of the Rotary First Harvest.

Today, it was supposed to be apples and onions instead of peas but a rock slide on I-90 required rescheduling. Canned and boxed goods are also sorted and distributed. Part of today's load was donated in student food drives, delivered by school bus.

RFH figures that in the life of the program they've provided more than 50,000 tons of fresh produce to undernourished people throughout Washington State; enough food to fill more than 1500 semi trucks.

Over a million people in Washington State depend on food banks where First Harvest produce goes. Nearly half of them are children. Studies show that undernourished children suffer from colds and other illnesses more frequently than other children with a healthy diet and are more likely to struggle scholastically and socially. Fruits and vegetables provide significant nutrition not just through calories but vitamins, minerals and anti-oxidants unlike much cheaper but nutritionally-hollow fast food.

"That's why our focus has always been on produce," said Rotary First Harvest Executive Director David Bobanick, by telephone.

"It's critically important," he said, "for seniors too, so they can stay healthy and don't have to buy all those expensive pills."

For last year, Rotary First Harvest gathered more than 200,000 pounds of peas, 600,000 pounds of apples, 900,000 pounds of apples and 2.5 million pounds of both potatoes and corn. It all adds up to a lot of sorting. The frozen food is trickiest.

"Oh, you bet your hands get cold, Leonard says. "Hauling these [cans] is a much better job."

With the advent of IQF or Individual Quick Frozen, produce can now be frozen and stored. It's revolutionized the industry and that extends to RFH which has seen tremendous growth in the amount of food gathered in recent years. Storage is easier to manage than harvests, so food that previously spoiled for lack of a receiver can be frozen and staged. According to Bobanick, Rotarians are gathering four times as much produce now as they were five years ago and last year alone gathered 11 million pounds.

But the growth in supply has not kept pace with demand. The US Department of Agriculture's report on household food security found that last year, 12 percent of households in Washington State were food insecure, compared to 11.6 percent the year before; an increase of more than a quarter of a million households.

"I don't think we're staying even with it. It would be nice if we could catch up by I don't think we ever will," Leonard says. He's been a Rotarian since the 60s and with First Harvest more than a decade. He knows the capacity of Rotarians; their wallets, smarts and sweat. But poverty has an insatiable appetite. There always seems to be more needing than giving.

Today's project ends almost exactly at noon. The final numbers; 8900 pounds of peas, which translates to 497 cases and enough to feed 989 three-member families. Of packaged goods, there are 11,701 lbs sorted and broken into 426 cases feeding 390 families. It won't feed everyone who is hungry.

"But we sure are making a dent in it," Leonard says.

Rotary First Harvest asks that readers wanting to make donations should give to their local food bank. If you want to work in the warehouse, you have to join the Rotary.