Kentucky Farmers End $26 Million Deal for Their Land After Learning It’s for a Data Center: ‘Kick Rocks’

Two women in Kentucky have become unlikely warriors in their community’s fight to prevent a large AI company from building a data center there.

Delsia Bare and her mother, Ida Huddleston, two self-proclaimed “country hicks,” initially agreed to sell their land to an unnamed AI company for $26.48 million — roughly ten times what it could fetch on the regular market, according to a Saturday, August 15 report in The Wall Street Journal. The duo signed the deal before realizing that the farm that had been in their family for 200 years would be converted into a data center.

To that, Bare had a blunt response that’s divided her community.

“Kick rocks and don’t come back,” she told a representative for the company after successfully getting the deal revoked.

Additionally, the mother and daughter filed two lawsuits that challenged the data center from being built in their area. One of the lawsuits required them to sue their neighbors to prevent the data center from being built, for now.

The outlet reports this caused the AI company to postpone closing on agreements with other farmers in the area, some of whom were expecting tens of millions of dollars in profit from their respective deals.

“I never thought I’d be in a battle with a data center,” Bare said. “I thought I was about as far out in the boondocks as you could get.”

However, she believes her faith gives her clear guidance on what to do about these data centers.

“What I believe in is something called Jesus Christ, and he said to occupy, wherever you’re standing, you occupy until he returns,” she explained to the Wall Street Journal. “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.”

According to the outlet, a judge has dismissed one of the lawsuits brought on by the duo, but the one in which they sued their neighbors remains ongoing.