About

Corylace Cove is earthskills in action! We offer woodlands, homesteading, and traditional crafts programs in the Beech Glen neighborhood of Mars Hill, NC, just 30 minutes north of Asheville and 30 minutes west of Burnsville. Corylace Cove is named after the American Hazelnut, Corylus americana, which grows abundantly on on our beautiful, 100-acre school property. Our programs are all outdoors, with a tarp space where we can make a cozy fire when needed.

Our main teachers and co-founders are Sara Henry and Grant Adkisson who have been teaching and mentoring young people for more than a dozen years.

Sara Henry has been mentoring children in a variety of earthskills since 2011, when she started out working with Sunflower Creative Arts, the play, arts and gardening focused kindergarten she attended herself when the school first opened.  Her heart lies in guiding children to express their sense of wonder with the natural world and to fall in love with nature.  Using the forest as a classroom, she guides children to follow their curiosities and explore natural mysteries.  She is a believer in learning through play!

Sara studied at the alternative liberal arts honors college, New College of Florida, where she earned a BA in Music and Anthropology. Through the amazing experiences she had growing up in holistic education environments she became passionate about the power of student directed learning, allowing children of all ages to find their passions through exploration and play. The caring mentors who guided her are a big part of why she has been inspired to be a teacher as her life’s work.  

She began working with Forest Floor Wilderness Programs in 2013 and Ancestral Knowledge in 2014, teaching practical skills and nature connection to children ages 3-17. She is the Youth Programs Coordinator for Earthskills Rendezvous and has adult and youth classes at the Firefly Gathering, Florida Earthskills and MAPS Meet.  In 2021 she and Grant started their own program, Fields and Forest, and she started Big Ivy Forest School.  She loves learning, growing and playing with children of all ages, and is especially passionate about early childhood education. 

She sees the need to weave social justice and intersectionality into the nature connection movement, and hopes to bring this awareness and action to all programs she facilitates. She understands that the idea of "wilderness" on this stolen land is a fallacy. This land was not a vast, unpopulated, wild place at the time of European arrival but a collection of thriving, culturally complex societies and civilizations with thoughtfully tended forest gardens and other varieties of agriculture. She aims to weave the cultural context of the forests she holds classes at in developmentally appropriate ways, delving into history in layers. She is a firm believer in offering reparations to black, indigenous and people of color, especially in the realm of nature connection, and offers her programs for free to any child who identifies as such. She is doing her best to heed the calls of the leaders and elders she respects, to walk in integrity and listen deeply.