Inside the Dartmouth YMCA, fitness fans are preparing for bathing suit season and staffers are gearing up for the start of Camp Metacomet. Outside, volunteers are sowing the seeds to feed the region's hungry for months to come.

When the volunteer-operated farm began as a small plot of raised beds in 2006, the term “recession” had yet to appear in daily headlines. But even now, in a post-recession economy, hunger pervades southern Massachusetts — especially among its youth.

A report from last year submitted to Boston’s Metropolitan Area Planning Council found that, in 2012, more than 700,000 people in Massachusetts were “food insecure,” 213,000 of which were children. Bristol County is one of the top three areas most affected by hunger.

Emma Rainwater, a volunteer coordinator for the farm, says that food insecurity is defined as “whether or not you know where your next meal is coming from.”

“There’s a lot of youth in the area that don’t have that security,” said Rainwater. “There’s not a lot of access to fresh food, too.”

The farm hopes to combat the problem by providing local food pantries with fresh, organic produce.

The space has expanded over the years to include four parcels of land, a greenhouse and an orchard. Taken together, it accounts for nearly five acres of land behind the Dartmouth YMCA facility. At that scale, the farm can donate to 17 different food pantries in Fall River, New Bedford and Wareham.

Rainwater said that volunteers come from every walk of life, including retirees, students, church groups and families. Volunteers have managed to harvest 289,000 pounds of food in the farm’s nine-year history.

“Last year in the fall, UMass Dartmouth did a day. There were 177 students out and they harvested 10,000 pounds of butternut squash in that day alone. It was wild,” said Rainwater.

Over Memorial Day weekend, Gillian Simmons brought her Brownie Troop and some of its members' friends to volunteer. The nine girls who showed up spent two hours of their morning working in the field. Simmons said the group had some reservations initially.

"The girls didn't want to get dirty, they were grossed out by the bugs. But they kept planting away and chit-chatting and loving it," said Simmons.

By the time they were done, the girls had planted 1,200 kale seedings and 200 squash seedlings.

"It wasn't easy. It was work, but it was a lot of fun. And they stuck with it — and they're 8 and 9. That's awesome," said Simmons.

Going forward, Rainwater said the Sharing the Harvest Farm will try to better understand the wants of those it’s serving.

“We’re working with a student to try to survey the pantries we work with so that we can get a sense if there’s stuff we’re not growing that people want in the area,” said Rainwater. “We want to make sure it’s useful and things that they actually want.”

UMass Dartmouth sociology student Connor Michienzie, 21, took on a volunteer role at the farm to better understand the region’s food crisis.

He said that when he visited one location to get a sense of that pantry’s needs, he was surprised by the number of people accessing the service.

“The churches get visits once a week. One half the alphabet will visit one week. The next week, the other half will visit. It’s roughly 600 people every two weeks — and this is just one pantry,” said Michienzie.

With the college semester over, he said he didn’t mind making the hour commute from his hometown of Walpole to spend time working in the garden.

“Waking up early and coming here and working outside gets you pumped up,” said Michienzie. “There’s a lot of work to be done.”

While still in the early phases of planting, volunteers have begun harvesting asparagus. It’s the first step in topping last year’s 82,000 pounds of produce.

“I think it does really help,” said Rainwater. “Everything we’ve heard from the pantries is that they appreciate getting it.”

Volunteers are asked only to have a willingness to work. There are no specific time commitments required, and there are drop-in times on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Saturdays between March and November. Visit the official website for more information.