MONTAGUE — They say it takes a village … so that’s what Doug and Jannie Dziadzio decided to make for the holidays this year.
In their dining room on Old Stage Road sits a 17-house gingerbread village complete with light posts, trees, fences, creatures and a beaver pond. On Christmas Day, they’ll transport that village to All Souls Church on Main Street in Greenfield, where Stone Soup Cafe will serve a community Christmas dinner.
“Community and love for community, that’s what inspired this — that’s what Stone Soup Cafe is all about,” said Ms. Dziadzio this past week, just after the couple had put the finishing touches on their labor of love.
When the Dziadzios decided to make another village this year — they made a smaller one of graham crackers last year — they were inspired by the close-knit community they saw when they volunteered to serve for the cafe on Thanksgiving.
Last year’s village consisted of nine houses. Though lovely, it was a little more raw, with a little less detail.
This year, as you stand on one end and look to the other, the village and its inhabitants draw you in. You want to live there — or at least visit for a while. The detail is right down to stained-glass windows and creatures’ eyes, each made from one nonpareil dot.
There’s a beaver pond made of blue and green melted Jolly Ranchers with a bridge that crosses over it. There’s a fire pit made from crushed almonds for the dirt, gingerbread for the logs and icing for the flames. There’s also a dog house where Rex the cat lives. And a bird made of a melted peppermint.
“The peppermint was tough,” said Ms. Dziadzio. “It took Doug a while to get the melted peppermint right. He would experiment with the temperature it needed to be. Sometimes, it was too hot, so too liquidy. Other times, it would shatter because it wasn’t hot enough. Finally, he came in with a big smile, all excited, saying 23 seconds in the microwave is perfect.”
“Everything is edible this year — well, except the few presents,” said Ms. Dziadzio, who is semi-retired, but works as a life coach and consultant.
Mr. Dziadzio, who worked at Bete Fog Nozzle Inc. as its vice president for 30 years, is an engineer. He said he wasn’t sure he’d be able to see beyond the engineering aspect of the project but found he has a creative side that he has fully embraced.
“It’s all realistic,” he said. “There are no clean edges. It’s like a real place.”
Crushed graham crackers fill the walkways, while sugar cones were used as the trees.
“We let intuition take over,” said Ms. Dziadzio. “We listened and gave thanks, and it came to us.”
Last year, the couple made their neighborhood out of the graham crackers and brought it to a neighborhood holiday party. They said they let neighborhood children take pieces home. And, that’s what they plan to do this year.
“We decided we wanted to take it to the Stone Soup Cafe on Christmas,” said Ms. Dziadzio. “Kirsten (who runs the cafe) said she thought it was a great idea, and she has the perfect place for it — atop the piano. She works tirelessly for the cafe — we’re blown away by her dedication. We are so impressed and just wanted to do something.”
The couple said Stone Soup Cafe is one of Greenfield’s greatest gems. It is held in All Souls Unitarian Universalist Church’s basement on Saturdays from noon to 1:30 p.m. All are welcome to the pay-what-you-can community lunch, and donations or payments are anonymous.
Kirsten Levitt, a second grade teacher at Sheffield Elementary School in Turners Falls, is the executive chef and executive director of the café, and she has stressed emphatically that Stone Soup Café is not a soup kitchen.
The Dziadzios said their village will be on display throughout the afternoon, and then any children attending will have the opportunity to bring some home.
“Big Y and Stop & Shop donated boxes, so anyone who wants can pack up a house or whatever they want,” said Ms. Dziadzio.
She said what is most important to her and her husband is that they’d get to share their village with others.
“This isn’t for us,” Mr. Dziadzio said. “It’s especially for the children.”
Ms. Dziadzio said what she was most impressed with as they spent two weeks, sometimes 12 to 14 hours a day, on the project, was the creativity and wonder she saw evolve in her husband. She got the recipe for gingerbread from a cookbook she bought at the Montague Bookmill, and after reading it from cover to cover, the couple took it from there.
“I had figured he’d make the plans, the templates, and I’d create the art — I come from an artistic family and have done art my entire life,” she said. “That’s not what happened. We shared responsibility for everything.”
So, together they figured the dimensions, made cardboard templates and then went about their work.
“When I asked him in the fall if he wanted to do this, I asked if he wanted to make a plan or just do it,” she said. “He said, “Just do it!”
“I’d get up around 5 each morning and come down and work quietly, think,” she said. “Then, Doug would get up a few hours later and we’d work at least until the sun went down — some nights until 10 or 11. It was fun.”
The couple would talk, listen to Christmas music and, sometimes, just sit in silence, they said. Though there was a little competition at times, they said it was nothing bad.
They said the broke the project into four pieces so that it would be more manageable, especially when they have to transport it. Before that, though, Mr. Dziadzio realized they weren’t going to be able to break up the 120 pieces of gingerbread by themselves, so he called on a friend at Bete, Gary Schmidt, who made the cookie cutters the couple used.
“He and Bete’s president and owner, they were all so helpful,” Doug said. “But then, the company has always considered its employees family. They were very happy to do this for us — and the community.”
The Dziadzios said they’ll create another village next year, maybe incorporating All Souls Church and/or Poet’s Seat Tower.
“But, we’re not going to think about that for another year,” Mr. Dziadzio said.
One of the most important lessons they learned?
When things broke or had to be fixed, they learned that royal icing will fix anything, they explained, laughing. “And, don’t discount what role tweezers can play in a project when it comes to detail,” Mr. Dziadzio continued.
They said one of the things they have found amusing is the tiny pieces of candy they keep finding under furniture.
“We’ll be finding those for a long while,” said Ms. Dziadzio.
The couple said their next project — not a holiday project — will probably be the Addams Family mansion. She said it’s going to be a lot more difficult, they think, because they’ll have to build up.
For now, their fatigue, desperation and frustration has disappeared. On Christmas morning, they said they’ll add wisps of white cotton candy to the chimneys for smoke and head to Stone Soup Cafe, with all of the hard work behind them.
The recent empty nesters said they’re really enjoying their time together, so they’ll find other projects to do and ways to spend time together in between their gingerbread village holiday projects. Until next year, they said they’ll be happy with their perfectly imperfect creation and when it’s time, they’ll think of ways to improve.
“We made plenty of mistakes the first and second times around,” Mr. Dziadzio said. “We thought long and hard and fixed them for this village. We’ll do that again.”
“Really, we did it for our community,” Ms. Dziadzio concluded.
Stone Soup Cafe will serve Christmas dinner from noon to 2 p.m. on Tuesday, Christmas Day. There will be activities for the children. For a list of what’s on the menu, visit the cafe on Facebook.