Recent COVID events created an environment where it was more challenging to reach clients with our gardening advice. The shelter in place protocol left the Fayette County extension horticulture program facing a new normal. 

Our path forward was clear, as we had struggled to find time to adopt the social media strategy we knew we wanted. The agent is not terribly tech savvy and our younger, capable horticulture technician wasn't an active social media user. We jumped in head first one day when we took a smart phone out back and just started shooting short, informative horticulture videos. I wanted horticulture topics but our technician had the brilliant idea to address an incoming cold front with a timely frost and freeze damage video. She made the right call and our initial video post reached over 250,000 people. 

We knew we were on to something huge and since have started filming more videos for classes and any topic that shows up seasonally. We have developed our own Youtube channel and our followers and subscribers are increasing daily. Our videos are extremely informal, casual to a fault, and not presented in professional language. Surprisingly, the most praised feature has been the casual non-technical approach. We are making sure not to  brand these as Fayette County resources but rather Kentucky Extension Horticulture.  We want the entire state to use them as a resource. It will be a lengthy process to populate the site with every topic we want, but the positive feed back has been overwhelming.