Set sprinklers to water the lawn or garden only - not the street or sidewalk.
Use the microwave to cook small meals. (It uses less power than an oven.)
Purchase "Green Power" for your home's electricity. (Contact your power supplier to see where and if it is available.)
Scrape, rather than rinse, dishes before loading into the dishwasher; wash only full loads.
Cut back on air conditioning and heating use if you can.
Turn off appliances and lights when you leave the room.
When you shop for certified organic produce at the Coppell, McKinney or Dallas farmers markets, chances are you're buying Gene Holmes' fruits and vegetables. He, his daughter and son fan out to the markets every Saturday morning from the family's Oak Ridge Valley Farms in Grand Saline, about 60 miles east of Dallas.
Mr. Holmes, 57, says going organic on the family's 4.6 acres had nothing to do with forecasting trends. It was related to the family's history of cancer.
"A good incentive is the fact that we had lots of cancer in our family," he says. "We began to raise questions: What can we do?"
They decided to go organic. After earning state certification, Mr. Holmes started selling at the Coppell market in 2003, its first year. Before that, he says, the family didn't raise enough extra to sell.
From there, interest has snowballed. He recently had to give up a fourth market – reluctantly, he says – because it was stretching his produce and family too far. At the Dallas market, he's part of the Farmer-Rancher Network.
"We feel like we have a good product that's totally organic," the soft-spoken farmer says. "We use no growth regulators, all-organic fertilizer, all-organic garden soil, all-organic pesticides and so forth.
"We just ordered a hundred praying mantises," he says. "They control a lot of bad pests, like squash bugs and lots of aphids." But they don't bother the beneficial insects, he says.
If you check out his stalls Saturday, you'll find crookneck and pattypan squash, zucchini, bell peppers, hot peppers, banana peppers, tomatoes, three kinds of cucumbers, new potatoes, onions, green beans and, at Coppell only, blueberries. The selection changes as the season progresses.
When he's not chasing farmers markets, Mr. Holmes is a state milk inspector.
"That's the day job," he says.
Kim Pierce is a Dallas freelance writer.
OAK RIDGE VALLEY FARMS
What: Certified organic produce from Grand Saline, east of Dallas
Where: Coppell, McKinney and Dallas farmers markets
When: Saturday mornings
