"In my opinion, if children don't learn to read, then they're going to be on some kind of assistance their whole life," said the owner of Maple View Farm. "You can't make a living without knowing how to read. "

Wanting to ensure that children in Orange County elementary schools do learn to read, Nutter is donating $10,000 yearly to the school system to create A Nutter Book Fund. The fund money, which is housed in the Triangle Community Foundation, will go to purchase books for students in a selection of the district's elementary schools.

The money this year is for kindergarten students. Next year, Nutter will donate $10,000 more, which will be used by teachers to buy books for first-graders. The year after, second-graders will be the beneficiaries of another $10,000 and then third-graders will get books from an additional $10,000. Then A Nutter Book Fund will start the cycle with kindergartners again.

"If you want children to learn to read, the time to get them is early," Nutter said. "You don't want to wait too long with them. You can make a real difference in the little grades, I think."

District officials believe the donation is the largest the system has ever received from an individual.

"This is absolutely spectacular," said Brenda Stephens, the chairwoman of the county school board. "This is a really big deal. What a wonderful, wonderful gift this is."

The gift will make a long-term difference in literacy in the county, said Karen Wallace-Meigs, the district's coordinator for grants. "What's particularly wonderful about it is that this is a gift that we will be able to enjoy for many years to come."

After Nutter's death, a charitable remainder trust will be created, with the school system receiving the interest from the trust.

For a long time, Nutter - whose five children all went through Orange County Schools - said he had wanted to do something that would help the county.

"We put a lot of thought into it," he said. "Orange County has been very good to me. I thought maybe there's something I could give back to it."

On a trip to the Dollywood amusement park in Tennessee, Nutter learned that a foundation created by singer and impresario Dolly Parton supplied every child in the county surrounding the park with a hardcover book every month until the child started school.

"We couldn't afford to do that," Nutter said, "but we thought it was a good idea. A lot of households around here don't have books available for little kids. This gives them an opportunity to at least look and know what a book is."

The book fund gift is not the first one Nutter and his family have made to county institutions. Last spring, the Nutters decided to lease about five acres of their property at a fee of $1 a year as a soccer field for county residents.

The Nutter family also several times has donated conservation easements on their property near Dairyland Road to the Triangle Land Conservancy. Nearly half the farm's 400 or so acres are now under easements, which means that they can never be turned into a subdivision or other type of development.

A Nutter Book Fund is an open fund that accepts contributions from anyone.

"Anything that anybody wants to give to the fund, they can," Nutter said. "I hope others might want to add to it."