A mother and daughter in rural Kentucky are being celebrated by neighbors after turning down more than $26 million from developers who wanted to purchase their 1,200-acre family farm for a sprawling data center project.
Ida Huddleston, 82, and her daughter, Delsia Bare, 54, own adjoining land in Mason County, Kentucky, an area where developers tied to a major data center proposal have been working to piece together a large site.
According to the pair, the offers totaled $26.48 million for farmland that has been in their family and worked for nearly two centuries. Bare said she was offered $48,000 an acre for 463 acres, while Huddleston was offered $60,000 an acre for 71 acres.
At first, the family was prepared to move forward. But they reversed course after discovering the property was intended for a 2.2-gigawatt hyperscale data center, a project far removed from the agricultural legacy they hoped to protect.
“Kick rocks and don’t come back,” Bare told the representative, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The decision has thrust the self-described God-fearing “country hicks” into a much larger fight over the rapid expansion of artificial intelligence infrastructure and the growing push to build massive data centers in rural America.
“I never thought I’d be in a battle with a data center,” Bare told the WSJ. “I thought I was about as far out in the boondocks as you could get.”
For months, the company connected to the proposed development was not publicly identified. But evidence that emerged this month pointed to Meta, though a company spokesman told the outlet that no final decision has been made about moving ahead with a project in the area.
Delsia Bare, 54, rejected about $22.2 million for her 463-acre property
Ida Huddleston, 82, turned down roughly $4.26 for her 71-acre farm
A Kentucky mother and daughter have refused more than $26 million from developers trying to buy their farmland for a proposed data center in Mason County
While Huddleston turned down the massive offer, the data center company offered vast amounts of money to nearby neighbors.
Some accepted, including a mobile home park where 28 residents, many retired or on fixed incomes, lived.
After Huddleston refused, the company shifted its plans and sought to rezone more than 2,000 nearby acres. The Mason County Fiscal Court approved the rezoning in May.
That prompted Bare to join a lawsuit seeking to stop the data center, citing concerns about its impact on the community, including new power and gas lines and pressure on the local water supply, local outlet WRKC reported.
The mystery company has agreed to fully fund roads, water, sewer, fiber and electrical infrastructure, ensuring the community faces no costs, county officials said. The project is also expected to create 400 permanent, six-figure jobs.
But Huddleston doesn’t buy it: ‘I say they’re a liar,’ she told the outlet. ‘That’s what I say. It’s a scam.’
Huddleston’s grandfather and great-grandfather once nurtured the farmland, growing wheat during the Great Depression. She said she wants to preserve the family’s generations-old legacy.
Local officials have claimed the data center could create around 400 permanent jobs and 1,500 construction jobs
‘What I believe in is something called Jesus Christ, and he said to occupy, wherever you’re standing, you occupy until he returns,’ she told the WSJ.
‘If I step off of this piece of property and it becomes something for an AI hub, then I have failed to occupy and I can be held accountable for that on the Judgment hour,’ she added.
Bare believes ‘artificial intelligence will be the destruction of the human race,’ and says she and her mother will continue to fight the potential data center project.
‘Even if I had $26 million, I’d want to sit here in my chair, and have my coffee and eat my food where I always do,’ Huddleston told the WSJ.
