Kerrie and Carol
The Seed Keeper Company
happen. The fence we speak of lives at a virtual address, #gardenchat. It is endlessly long and there's
room for everybody.
On December 6, 2010 at 4:53 pm CST we sent our first tweet. A piece of paper with the time written
on it is proudly posted on a bulletin board in our office. It represents a major step for The Seed Keeper
Company. We were not willing adopters of social media. After the first tweet, it took us a few days
to get the lingo down and understand RT (retweet) and # (hash tag). The first tweet was sent with a
purpose--we would be able to join #gardenchat. We had heard about it from a number of garden folks
and thought we'd check it out.
What you might not know is we both tweet for the Seed Keeper Company. In the early days of tweeting
you could find us both huddled around one computer for #gardenchat. One of us would tweet while
the other tried to keep up with the dizzying feed of tweets--the funny part is we would switch places
at the half hour and the other person would be in the official tweeter. We're advanced now and have
mustered the courage to tweet on two computers at once. On Monday evenings you'll find us sitting at
our facing desks wrapped in the #gardenchat twitter stream. We're quite sure someone messes with the
time because #gardenchat is the fastest hour of our week.
Jump ahead a little over a year and The Seed Keeper Company has almost a 1,000 followers and we have
made some wonderful friends.
Every Monday, we look forward to the evening and a departure to a place where all gathered love
gardening as much as we do. The topics each week provoke a vigorous conversation that always teaches
us something new. Here's the twist: all of this fabulous information is shared among friends in a warm
open setting. We've come to know many friends here and have had the opportunity to meet some in
person. When we do meet, it's like a reunion with an old friend.
We've been fortunate to attend a few of the #gardenchat-on-location events. Like the ones on
tweetchat--it is a fabulous frenzy of gardeners gathered together. Again, the beauty is, we all know each
other. When we introduce ourselves it's with our twitter handle (@SeedKeeperCo). At the Northwest
Flower and Garden Show we met a fellow #gardenchat-ter who told us her mother was so excited to
meet us. All because of #gardenchat.
#gardenchat has created a wonderful network of gardeners and garden world professionals. Each time
we attend we meet new gardeners and learn tons of new information about gardening.
We like to think of #gardenchat as a year-round garden with an endless picket fence. It doesn't matter
what zone you're in--you can always find a place along the fence every Monday night at #gardenchat.
Kerrie & Carol
The Seed Keeper Company
