For a place that started off as a run-down sheep farm, Chewonki has come a long way.

On the eve of the Chewonki Foundation's 100-year anniversary, a little time was spent Thursday, Sept. 25 looking back over its founding.

More time, however, was spent looking forward.

At a Harvest Dinner on Thursday, Sept. 25, communities from Bath to Damariscotta were honored as Chewonki spent equal portions looking back and looking forward. The dinner itself featured locally-grown and sourced food and beverages, which are a big part of not only Chewonki's future, but Maine's, Chewonki President Willard Morgan said.

“Locally-grown food sounds great, but it's usually harder to do in practice,” he said. “For just this dinner, there was a lot of pre-planning going on. You have to plan out everything, you have to think about everything you plan (to serve). There are a lot of peaks and valleys.”

In the end, the harvest dinner, which was just one of 84,000 meals served via Chewonki, was significantly borne from the local labor, Morgan said.

“About 25 percent (of the meal) came from either the farm, or a farm in Maine,” he said.

The meal was attended by a large crowd of people from towns neighboring Chewonki. The full house was treated to locally-sourced ingredients and the leftovers went either to pigs or the compost pile.

Morgan said that despite being around for 99 years, Chewonki is still striving to be well known throughout the state.

“A lot of people have come up to me and said 'Oh, I didn't realize you were here,'” he said. “We want everyone to know what we do, that we're here. We want people to look to us and know that we will always be a resource not just (for the students at the campus) but the community.”

Part of that outreach has included bringing in several other like-minded organizations, like when earlier in the summer groups of students from Erickson Field Reserve, Cultivating Community and Wolfe's Neck Farm participated in the first Youth Agricultural Day.

“Chewonki's roots have always been in education,” Morgan said. “One hundred years ago, a teacher from just outside of Boston found this abandoned sheep farm, and decided that it would make a perfect camp. In 1962, Chewonki became a nonprofit.

“As we go into our second century, we're always thinking about how to invest in Maine. We'll focus more intensely on building thriving communities.”

The mission, Morgan said, hasn't changed too drastically in the past 99 years: to offer trans-formative learning opportunities that are rooted in the outdoors.

To that end, Lawrence Kovacs, Regional School Unit 1 representative, said Chewonki has especially enriched lives since 1915.

Kovacs said that his previous experience with Outward Bound taught him the importance of outdoor education and he sees that same power at work at Chewonki.

“I decided a while ago that I wanted something bigger,” he said, referring to his time inside a classroom. “It's been my personal moral imperative to put kids in (outdoor situations).”

Kovacs said that being outside strips away extraneous things, and allows students to focus on what's important. He said that during one of his three-day trips (“Three day trips are the best; the first night the kids all think 'What am I doing here?'”) he saw how students bond and come together through a shared trans-formative event.

“I saw a community rebuilt, without Facebook, without TV, without cliques,” he said. “They were just being.”