We Indian women helped one another a good deal in squash planting; especially would we do turns with our relatives. If I got behind with my planting, some of my relatives, or friends from another family, would come and help me. When a group of relatives thus labored together, four women commonly went ahead making the hills, and two women followed, planting the sprouted seeds.
Harvesting the Squashes
The squash harvest began a little before green corn came in. It was our custom to pick squashes every fourth morning; and the fourth picking—twelve days after the first picking—brought us to green corn time.
The first picking was, naturally, not very large—three or four basketfuls, I think, in my father’s family; and these we ate ourselves. The basket used for bringing in the squashes was about fifteen inches across the mouth and eleven inches deep.
The second picking was about ten basketfuls, enough for us to eat and spare a little surplus to our neighbors. After this each picking increased until a maximum was reached, and then the pickings decreased in size. The fifth or sixth picking was usually the largest.
The pickings were made before sunrise. In my father’s family, one of my mothers and I usually attended to the actual picking. It was her habit to get up early in the morning, go to the field and pluck the squashes from the vines, piling them up in one place in the garden. She returned then to the lodge; and after the morning meal, the rest of us women of the household went out and fetched the squashes home in our baskets.
Squashes grow fast, and unless we picked them every four days, we did not think them so good for food. Moreover, squashes that were four days old we could slice for drying, knowing that the slices would be firm enough to retain their shape unbroken. If the squashes were plucked greener, the slices broke, or crumbled.
We could tell when a squash was four days old. Its diameter then was about three and a quarter inches; some a little more, some a little less; but we chiefly judged by the color of the fruit. A white squash should just have rid itself of green; a green colored squash should have its color a dark green. We could judge quite accurately thus, by the state of the colors.
The hills yielded some three, some two, some only one squash at a picking. I have made as many as six trips to our family garden for the squashes of a single picking; our garden was distant as far as from here to Packs Wolf’s cabin—three quarters of a mile.