It was finding her mother sobbing among her flower beds that made up Delsia Bare's mind.

Bare, 54, had signed a deal to sell the family's 530-acre cattle farm in northern Kentucky to a mystery buyer for an astonishing $26 million. In hospital at the time with multiple health issues and confused by the concept, Bare accepted their mindboggling offer.

But 81-year-old Ida Huddleston was devastated at the thought of leaving the log cabin she and her husband had built by hand 40 years ago, and abandoning the farm tended by their ancestors since before the Civil War.

'She was upset,' Bare told the Daily Mail, as she sat on a wicker chair in front of that log cabin, surrounded by those pink and yellow spring flowers nurtured by her mother.

'She sat there in the flower garden. She said: "I don't want to leave where your daddy built for me to live. I don't want to leave all my flowers." And I said, "Well, that's easy enough. I'll call the realtor and ask him to get me out of it."

'But then those involved in the deal started saying: "You and Huddleston will be sorry. You'll be so sorry when this is over."'

They did get out of the deal, in July 2025, two months after signing. And they are not in the least bit sorry.

Bare and her mother are now at the forefront of a fight to stop the construction of a massive data center on the land they and their neighbors have farmed for generations, which would replace flower-speckled fields with giant warehouses full of computer servers.

On April 22 the county planning board is scheduled to meet to approve the plans, giving the green light for 2,000 acres of pasture, creeks and woodlands to be flattened for a hyperscale data center housing more than 5,000 computer servers. The farms in the developers’ sites sit in Mason County. Right on the Ohio River, it is a prime location, with good highways to Louisville, roughly 100 miles southwest, and Cincinnati, 60 miles to the northwest.

The residents have been told it is for a leading tech firm - 'one of the largest companies in the world' according to Tyler McHugh, the head of the local Industrial Development Authority (IDA) - but much of the details are shrouded in secrecy.

Slivers of information have been pieced together by dogged locals, giving rise to suspicion that it is Meta that wants to build there. Meta did not respond to the Daily Mail's request for comment, and all those involved – both county officials and those who sold their land – have signed non-disclosure agreements, concealing the company's name.

Dr Timothy Grosser, a 76-year-old primary care physician in the county seat of Maysville, does not want any data center at all. He and his son Andy, who raise Hereford cattle on 250 acres, were the first farmers to say no, turning down increasingly outlandish prices and rejecting their final offer of $8 million – around eight times the usual price - in March 2025.

'The only thing that I knew about data centers back then was that they took a lot of energy and a lot of water,' he said. 'And I started doing a lot of research, found out all the other things that they do.'

Dr Grosser worries about light and air pollution, noise and chemical run-offs from the construction and the completed site. He believes their electricity prices will triple as the local power company builds a new plant to accommodate the massive demand. And he wants to preserve the pristine grassland he has tended for almost 40 years, where cattle and wildlife roam and his grandchildren hunt deer and wild turkeys.

'Money can't buy happiness,' he said. 'I would never give this land up. It's my life. It's the principle of the whole thing. And almost every patient who comes into my office is opposed to it. A lot of them thank me for standing up to them.

'They're trying all over the United States. They thought they could get the land cheap and that people would be stupid and go along with it. They brainwash the county commissioners into thinking that it's such a great thing, then all the population does their research and finds out, as we did, that it's not good at all.'

He points across the valley to a white house on a hillside, which will be demolished for the data center. The tech company has had to adjust their map due to the holdouts and is now intending to build around the edges of those refusing to sell.

But Dr Grosser does not blame those among his neighbors who have chosen to sell. Like Ida Huddleston, whose farm will also be flanked by the new development, he believes that each person is free to take the money.

For Delsia, however, it is 'hurtful' that some of her neighbors have done so.

'Land around here is usually $4-6,000 an acre,' she said. 'They were slobbering at $26,000. Ours was $60,000, and some data centers have been built on land bought for $260,000 an acre - so maybe even our offers were too little.'

One neighbor, she said, has sold the farm his family settled in the late 1700s, where his family burial plot is located and his mother's ashes scattered.

Bare's own husband and father both died in 2013, and their ashes are scattered on the farm.

Chris Blair, an archaeologist with engineering and environmental consultancy Stantec, is leading a team of 18 investigating the under-contract farmland for evidence of burial sites. The bodies they find will have to be moved, he explained, with the survey taking until at least June.

'And almost every farm here will have a family burial plot on it,' one local farmer told the Daily Mail. 'So that's a lot of work.'

The farmer has sold to the tech company, but not without misgivings. He is hoping the data center won't be built: his home of 40 years will be bulldozed, plus the 120-year-old house of his mother, as well as the neighboring home his grandparents lived in. He doesn't know where he'll go.

'We didn't want to sell. We didn't want to go. And I more or less told them we wouldn't sell, for any price,' he said, speaking on the porch overlooking the cattle in his fields. He spoke on condition of anonymity.

'But they kept coming back. And in June 2025, we were told that if the contract is not signed, that the people down here - the Industrial Development Authority, the tech company - they could not use eminent domain and force us to sell, but the power company, East Kentucky Power, could, to put in substations and so forth.'

Utilities companies and state government can use 'eminent domain' to compel someone to sell their land for public use. A private company cannot.

He said: 'I talked to a couple of lawyers that told me the same thing. So we reluctantly did sign the contract. Our neighbors around us had sold, so we felt like we had no choice: we were surrounded.

'It's take this carrot and bite it, or we'll shove it down your throat. That's the way that I took it.'

County officials do not see it that way.

McHugh, the IDA director, said the data center had guaranteed in writing that they would create 400 permanent jobs paying $90-100,000 a year, in an area where the average salary was around $40,000. Locals do not trust that pledge, insisting that comparable sites employ only 50-100 people.

McHugh was adamant, though, and told the Daily Mail he was confident those jobs would go to local people, not Silicon Valley imports.

He said the tech company offered to sweeten the deal by spending $50 million replacing the antiquated water treatment facility in the region, which everyone agrees is no longer fit for purpose.

Locals scoff at the claim, pointing out that the ferocious lawyers backing the tech company will likely secure favorable tax benefits easily outweighing the cost. They also fear their electricity prices will rise to absorb any upgrades.

McHugh denied this. He said: 'From all the conversations I've had with the leadership of Eastern Kentucky Power, and across the board, they are saying any type of infrastructure improvement needed to make this project work will have to be paid by the project itself. And that will not be passed on to rate payers.’

And he said he had visited sites currently operated by the tech company, and was confident the noise, light and water pollution would be minimal.

Tanner Nichols, an attorney with Frost Brown Todd, representing the tech company, did not respond to the Daily Mail's request for comment. Meanwhile board administrator George Larger told the Daily Mail that the four members of the seven-person zoning board who voted to support the plan were unavailable to explain their vote.

Matt Wallingford, city manager for the county seat of Maysville, the nearest city to the land in question, is in favor of the plan. He like McHugh sees nothing sinister in the insistence that those involved sign NDAs and brushes away any such suggestion, seeing it as standard procedure.

'It will be transformational for our community, not only just because of what this brings and the higher paying jobs, but the indirect benefits, the other industries, the other businesses that will locate here because of this facility,' he said.

What would he say to people who actually don't want that their community transformed?

'I would say that if you're not moving forward, you're going backwards,' he said. 'That's exactly what I would say.'

The farmers, though, are not going down without a fight.

Max Moran, 22, runs the We Are Mason County group on Facebook, with 3,800 members sharing updates on the proposal and horror stories from other data centers. So enthused is he by the battle that he is running for office, hoping to be elected in November as judge executive of Mason County. If victorious he plans to immediately veto the plan.

Moran and his group feel it's more than a local Kentucky fight, and he has visited other parts of the country to see their data centers and hear their tales.

The United States is home to more data centers than any other country in the world, with 4,000 nationwide and plans to build hundreds more.

They are often created in clusters - Virginia has the most - and, while some states are welcoming them with tax incentives, others are pushing back. Virginia voters are not happy with their position at the top of the table: in 2023, 69 percent of voters said they supported the creation of data centers in their state, but a new poll out this week showed that plunging to 35 percent.

Nationwide, 62 percent of Americans say the cost of data centers outweighs the benefits, according to a Marquette Law School poll conducted in January.

On Tuesday Maine became the first state to ban the building of new data centers, with the block in place until 2027, while at least 12 other states led by both Democrats and Republicans are considering their own temporary bans. Ohio is currently debating a bill to outlaw NDAs shielding the prospective tech company.

Andy Beshear, the governor of Kentucky and potential 2028 presidential candidate, told the Daily Mail he was broadly in favor of building data centers, providing the tech companies give certain guarantees.

He said: 'For me, there are three rules that a data center has to meet. Number one, the companies must pay for their own power, because our families cannot pick up that cost. 

'Two, companies need to pay their fair share of taxes, because the centers can generate significant dollars for our local public schools and communities. 

'Three, a company must build a relationship with the community, which has to support and accept the project.'

Back on the farm, Bare laughed at the idea of the tech company bringing benefits to her region.

'It's a Trojan Horse,' she said. 'We'll give you a gift and kill the next generation.'

Some of her relatives, not living locally, had urged her to sell. But the millions did not matter to her, she insisted.

'What would I do with $26 million?' she said. 'Could you see me living in a Miami penthouse, driving a convertible? And anyway, I have to meet my daddy on the other side. What would I tell him?'