By Justin Isherwood

As a farmkid, homemade kinda creeped me out. It seemed we were intrinsically and fatalistically surrounded and defined by homemade; homemade bread, homemade clothes, homemade preserves, homemade houses, homemade heat, even our fun was homemade. Homemade was our social station as much as it was a craft skill.

Every year, our mom made us a new set of school clothes, mostly shirts, if there were also mittens though I don’t remember a string, sweaters of course, stocking caps, scarves and snow pants that as I recall didn’t bend in any of the right places. To suspect there is incipient mothering instinct to dress children alike out of fear we aren’t otherwise recognizable as her own.

We soon realized homemade clothes were not the cultural norm, and besides, our mom had not taken an advanced course in clothing metrics at college. To the result, her shirts were an analogue of building a house out of slab wood: it can be done but the result is a bit rugged.

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