FARMINGTON – Another farm toppled Friday, this one with a haunting past.

The family homestead of the late Oliver Osborne, his wife Janette and their children, including Joshua, who is accused of shooting his mother this summer in a dispute over the farm, was demolished.

Janette Osborne was shot once in the chest in July while hanging out clothes.

Janette Osborne had planned to sell the farm, but Joshua Osborne wanted to buy it and farm the land.

Joshua Osborne is being held without bail on attempted murder and criminal solicitation to commit murder in Franklin County jail. His girlfriend Donna Enman also faces an attempted murder charge.

Outbuildings and most of a large barn, across the street from the homestead at 172 Osborne Road, were also being taken down by McCarthy Enterprises of Skowhegan for new owners Tom and Scott Dillon of Anson and Madison.

The new owners wanted the buildings torn down.

The Dillons offered to farmers in the area almost anything they wanted from the property before it was completely destroyed.

Marc Bailey of Farmington, who lost a barn to fire last year, took home some wall frames to build a hay barn.

Three other farmers received some sheet metal salvaged for them by Tom McCarthy and his crew.

As Bailey got in his vehicle to follow a load of walls, he said, it was too bad.

“They were going to burn it, and they offered to give it to us,” Bailey said. “We were friends with Josh, and we were trying to help him. He got a raw deal.”

Another farmer, Konrad Bailey of Farmington, drove by and stopped his truck.

Workers near the barn were dragging metal roofing and wood into separate piles. Two other workers loaded farm tires on a skidder for removal.

“It’s a tragedy,” Bailey said. “It’s all because of greed.”

Two men stopped by and salvaged some windows from a porch.

Alan Griffeth drove an excavator across the lawn of the homestead before he started to push in the porch.

The pulled-down porch roof revealed the age of the farmhouse: metal roofing on top of asphalt on top of wooden shingles.

The excavator opened the side to show an inside brick wall in a main room; nearby a barn-board-sided staircase led up to the second floor.

On the other side of the brick wall, a mural of sunflowers and birdhouses brightened a room.

It wasn’t long before the roof on the house toppled shutting off the view of the inside. The chimney toppled soon after.

Farmers watched from farm fields across the valley.

On Monday, the piles of wood are to be burned.

On Monday, there will be a hole in the Farmington landscape and the farming community.

dperry@sunjournal.com

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