The Maple View Farm owners have agreed to donate a conservation easement on about 81 wooded acres south of Dairyland Road. The Nutters' agreement with the Triangle Land Conservancy means that nearly half the farm's 400 or so acres are now under easements, including the initial 107-acre easement the family donated to the conservancy in 1995.

"I don't know what will happen to it in the future, but they'll never build houses on it," Bob Nutter said.

The easements mean the Nutters and their heirs can never turn those 188 acres into a subdivision or other type of development. The family gets tax benefits, and it retains ownership and the right to continue uses like agriculture and harvesting timber.

The Nutters have resisted undoubtedly lucrative offers for the property. Chris Nutter remembers one developer who approached her and her husband a few years ago.

"He made the mistake of saying to us, 'Wouldn't it be wonderful to sit here on you front porch and see all the beautiful houses?' " Nutter said.

"We looked at him rather blankly, I'm sure, and we said, 'No, we like what we see now.'

"It's really nice to sit here now and not see it change, except for the seasons. We want other people to see that, too."

Houses will be built elsewhere, and someday, that area will be looked on as a haven by the residents of an even more populous Orange County.

And Orange can't lay sole claim to benevolent landowners. Ann Von Gruenigen has put all 320 acres of her Chatham County farm under a conservation easement, including her homestead, cattle pastures and forested land.

"I have always been bothered by development," Von Gruenigen said. "I've been a conservationist since I was a child."

She also is owed the community's thanks for her conservationist urges.

This is a beautiful area in which to live, and it is understandable that more people will want to live here. Development is going to happen, and the newcomers can't be begrudged the opportunity to live here.