Mom and Daughter Initially Agreed to Take $26M Data Center Offer. Why They Changed Their Minds and Refused to Sell! QT

“Money couldn’t move what all I’ve got put in place here, so I just might as well stay and fight it out right where I’m at,” Ida Huddleston, 82

From left, Ida Huddleston, 82, and daughter Delsia Bare in log home.

Delsia Bare says she’s never considered having $26 million in her bank account a foundation for happiness.

“The more money you have, the more problems you have,” Bare, 54, tells PEOPLE. “It never went through my mind that this was a Cinderella story. I never wanted to leave my land.”

Bare and her mom, Ida Huddleston, 82, hit the national spotlight when they spoke out about turning down a $26 million offer to sell their farmland in Maysville, Ky., to make way for a proposed 2,000-acre data center.

“Money couldn’t move what all I’ve got put in place here, so I just might as well stay and fight it out right where I’m at,” Huddleston, a feisty grandmother of three, tells PEOPLE while sitting in the living room of the log home she and her husband built on the land more than 60 years ago.

Huddleston’s time on the farmland began when she was not quite 17 and a newlywed.

Together with her husband William Robert “Bill” Huddleston, who was just 18 himself, they began building a life filled with family and long work days.

Over the years, the family continued adding land, never selling — and for their daughter, growing up there was a dream, filled with horse riding and working the land. Bare’s late husband is even buried behind their home in an old cemetery dating back to 1638.

Before her own husband passed away in 2013, Huddleston insisted on protecting the entire family’s tradition of putting down roots, ensuring the property would be divided between her, Bare and their 64-year-old son, William Robert “Bob” Huddleston.

Bob Huddleston, who shares his father’s name and passed it on to his own son, also lives on the property. Even though he didn’t make headlines, he opposes the data center sale.

“You can’t get food out of a data center, and everything coming out of the data center is going to be poison and destructive,” the family matriarch says.

As the demand for electronic data centers grows, tech companies are spending trillions of dollars to build them all over the United States, especially in farm country.

Those opposed to the centers say they threaten the environment, use an exorbitant amount of energy and create very few economic incentives for displaced locals.

As for the Maysville community, they still don’t know which company is behind the project, or whether it will proceed as planned — although all signs currently point to yes.

When reached by PEOPLE, Planning and Zoning Administrator George Larger says the project is through the planning stages and now goes to fiscal court for approval.

“The planning commission approved the rezonings,” Larger says. “And then last week on the 22nd, they had another special meeting and they approved the development plan with a condition. And so it now goes to the Mason County Fiscal Court.”

According to the Maysville Mason County Industrial Development Authority, the company behind the purchase will finally disclose its identity once the approval process is complete and a final decision is made.

The data center is a subject both women admit they knew little about before offers for neighboring farms suddenly began materializing last year.

“We were sitting here minding our own business whenever a neighbor come in carrying on about over the top bids for farms when the land’s been selling for about $4,600 an acre,” Bare says. “It sounded like a scam.”

But the real question for Bare was: “Can we be forced to sell it?”

Bare says the family had already been hit by eminent domain claims in the past.

Once the government legally bought some of their property for a public highway — a purchase the family could not refuse — two more instances followed in which they had to part with some of their land for landfill.

So they were understandably wary when an unsolicited, escalating series of offers from a realtor representing a non-disclosed buyer quickly felt like history was about to repeat itself

Janet Garrison, a local activist opposing the data center, claims that when the farmers were first approached, they were told the government might step in to take the land if they didn’t sell.

“They told the farmers, ‘You’re right in the middle of the project, and if you do not commit to sell, then we’ll probably have to use eminent domain and put a substation right in your front yard,’ ” Garrison tells PEOPLE. “And we’re talking like a 30 acre substation.”

Afraid of potentially being forced out of another chunk of land for a much lower sum, Bare says that initially “we got scared and signed their blasted contract.”

Bare says she had the added pressure of multiple health issues. She suffers from detached retinas, leaving her with impaired vision, and she had a bad fall due to her heart medication.

However, the next day, Bare says her mom told her she didn’t want to leave her home — or her flower beds.

Bare’s response was swift. “That’s easy enough. I’ll just call the realtor and tell him I’m not selling,” she says.

Although their own decision to take a stand may not prevent the data center from being built, the family says they feel grounded in their decision.

They see the land as God’s creation entrusted to them, and they vow to remain on it until getting pulled out  “feet first” if necessary.

“We thought we had it all laid out just right until Big Data Center come in and irritated the life out of us,” Ida says. “We don’t know which way to go, but we’re still trying to hang on to the land because everything comes from the land. Once you tear it up, you can never replace it again.”