Farm owner Bob Nutter has offered to lease about five acres on the edge of a cornfield along Rocky Ridge Road for the soccer field. He would lease the land at a fee of $1 a year for 10 years.

"I don't know anything about soccer, except that it seems to be a sport that is increasing in popularity, and there don't seem to be enough places to play," Nutter said.

Nutter said he got the field idea after hearing a neighbor talk about driving the family's two girls to Cedar Grove for soccer practice. It struck him as slightly ridiculous that there weren't any closer soccer facilities.

"I had this piece of land over on Rocky Ridge, and I felt like it wouldn't hurt us too much to cut four or five acres off," he said.

To construct the field, local soccer clubs are proposing to raise $30,000 and they intend to ask the county for a matching allocation of $30,000, toward a total cost of $60,000.

That cost would include $30,000 for constructing the field, $10,000 for a gravel parking lot, $10,000 for an irrigation system, $5,000 for equipment and another $5,000 for maintenance in the first two years of the field's operation, according to a report submitted to the Orange County Commissioners.

The initial plan is for the soccer groups - including Rainbow Soccer, the Triangle Futbol Club and the Durham-Chapel Hill Strikers - to use the field from 4 p.m. until dark Monday through Friday during their fall and spring seasons. The field would then be open for other use on the weekends.

Representatives of the soccer clubs, local officials and soccer enthusiasts took part in a soccer symposium last spring, with many attendees describing what they saw as a critical shortage of soccer fields in Orange County. A desire for more fields throughout the county and a central soccer complex that could host tournaments was a central theme in the symposium.

Some of those representatives have continued to meet since the symposium, looking for ways the soccer clubs could work together more closely to meet goals like creating more facilities.

The county commissioners last week approved the overall concept for developing the Maple View field, although they haven't formally committed to spending the $30,000.

The report they received ast tweek listed three possible sources for that money: the commissioners' contingency fund, which currently has $150,000; the county's Recreation and Parks facility improvement account, which also has about $150,000; and the $105,000 that remains for facility development from the 1997 bond funds.

The soccer field at Maple View would be on a level section of a 35-acre field where corn and barley are raised on a rotating basis. One condition of the deal is that there will be no lights on the soccer field, Nutter said.

The spot is just down Rocky Ridge Road from the ice cream store that the family opened to great acclaim in January.

Asked whether he hopes the soccer field will generate more ice cream customers, Nutter laughed and said, "I don't think it will hurt any."

But he said that wasn't part of the family's motivation for leasing the field.

"It wasn't a money-making proposition," he said. "It was just something I felt I could do for the community. The community has been good to us."

And besides, he said, the store employees practically have to run people out of the store at closing time, especially on the weekends.

"We're making ice cream almost 40 hours a week," he said. "We're extremely pleased with the way it's going. We have sold a lot more ice cream this winter than we ever anticipated."

The store currently is open until 7:30 p.m. on weekdays and 9 p.m. on weekends. The weekday closing time likely will be extended to 9 p.m. this summer, once the students who work in the store are on summer break, Nutter said.

"But we will never be open past 9 p.m.," he said. "We're not looking for the midnight crowd. We're in the country, and people in the country go to bed early."

County Recreation and Parks Director Bob Jones said there's no definite timeframe yet for having the soccer field ready to use, although sometime this fall would be ideal, he said.