GANOTOWN – Candace Wood celebrated the opening of her ice cream shop, Ganotown Ice Cream, on Saturday, surrounded by her family, friends and neighbors. She says the years-long project has been a dream come true for her.
Wood grew up in Back Creek Valley, with fond memories of attending local church festivals and fire hall festivals, where she would make homemade ice cream with her family. That experience inspired her to start up an ice cream shop to be closer to that community.
“It was a huge social gathering and just a place for everybody to get together,” Wood said. “Those are just some very deep, core memories for me; making ice cream with them.”
With the new shop, Wood is hoping to make a gathering place for her community, just like the festivals from her childhood. To that end, the shop is complete with an outdoor seating area with tables and chairs under a canopy.
“There’s nothing over here, so it’s like, what can we do to gather people?” Wood said. “Everyone loves ice cream, so hopefully that’s what it is. It just gets people together.”
Wood and her family broke ground for the shop just a little over three years ago, with her husband and her father-in-law putting in work excavating the foundation for the place and cleaning up the property. From there, they had a company come in and put up the building for them before putting on the finishing touches themselves.
“We would save up and pay for things as we went along, just a little piece by piece and over again the years,” Wood said. “It took a while, but slowly and surely we got there.”
Wood says the best part of the experience has been doing it alongside her husband, Matthew Wood, and her two daughters, seven-year-old Zoey and three-year-old Piper. She hopes it’s something she can pass along to the two of them someday.
“Being able to do this with them and having them involved in it, that’s pretty special just because this is a big piece of them,” Wood said. “My 7-year-old’s been at this for three years just like we have, so this is again, just those core memories for her to have something to remember from her childhood.”
Going forwards, Wood is hoping to make the ice cream shop into a go-to spot for community events, things like car shows, local bands and other community gatherings. They’re also planning on adding to the menu, things like homemade ice cream.
Ganotown Ice Cream, located at 2265 Back Creek Valley Road, is open Thursday to Saturday from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. and Sunday from 2 p.m. to 9 p.m. More information is available online on their Facebook page, Ganotown Ice cream.
