Green Guy: Eric Rochow

With a lack of news items lately I have decided to start a special section focusing on Well-Met men that are doing  what I aspire to out in the real world. These could be activists, philanthropists, environmentalists, nutrionists, or anyone like person that is trying to make others better. Where I can they will be your average guy, not wealthy or famous people who can do these things far easier and bigger than most of us can.

Today I would like to tell people about a man that has captured the interest of not only myself but my wife as well, a man who is doing educational work on environmentalism of a sort. Normally I would title this type of article 'Green Man', after the architectural and artistic motif of faces surrounded by leaves, to call out a man who is promoting green practices, but with Eric Rochow Green 'Guy' seems to better fit.


Eric Rochow is host of Gardenfork.tv - an online video blog - and all around do-it-yourself accidental environmentalist of sorts. On GardenFork, Eric has instructional video blogs on doing all sorts of things from gardening, to cooking, to home maintenance. He lives on a farm but all of his tips are useful for men with any size home and yard. What I like about Eric, and the reason I called this the 'Green Guy', is that he truly is the average guy next door. His videos are not scripted - he often messes up on screen, he talks to the viewer like a friend over for a beer, and he does not preach or come across as having holier-than-thou attitude about how he lives his life or does things around he house. While many of his practices are 'green', you get the feeling he does them just because they are better than non-green methods in general, and not because he is trying to be 'green' per se.

Eric shows you hows to make many fast and easy yet delicious food such as homemade peanut butter cups, parsley pesto, even homemade ricotta cheese, and one of the best is making donuts from Pillsbury biscuits. He shows you how to grow your own ingredients for the recipes with instructions on how to build trellises, make your own seed starter pots, and how to make a grow cage of wire mesh - one his funnier episodes. Then there are the home maintenance videos such as how to tune up your lawn mower, get rid of ice dams, and how to increase mpgs on any regular car.

His videos would not be as entertaining if not for his wife's straight-man off-screen comments nor the filler shots of his many dogs playing (and if you have been paying attention you know I love dogs), although Eric alone and his somewhat droll, impromptu delivery and the expectation that quickly arises after viewing a few videos that something will go wrong every time.

I highly recommend visiting GardenFork.tv and checking out his videos - I guarantee you will laugh and learn at the same time.