Cucurbita pepo
Origin: Nanticoke People
Improvement status: Landrace
Seeds per packet: ~16
Germination tested 12/2025: 86%
Life cycle: Annual
Maycocks were the summer squash of the Nanticoke people, indigenous to the central Delmarva Peninsula and southern New Jersey. Like the Nanticoke winter squash (Cucurbita maxima), these Maycocks (Cucurbita pepo) are very diverse in form and color. That diversity is the variety's strength, making the population resilient in the face of pests, diseases, extreme weather, weed pressure, etc. Over the last 200 years, much Cucurbita pepo biodiversity has been lost, with most commercial offerings today being ephemeral F1 hybrids. There are only a few historic landraces still in existence — making these seeds even more important to preserve. Traditionally, maycock fruit were eaten fresh but also commonly sliced and dried for winter use. Few alive today have ever heard of maycock squash until recently, and if not for a fortuitous meeting in the 1980s, this wonderful squash landrace might have disappeared forever, like so many others.
Early in his seed-saving career in the 1980s, Dr. William Woys Weaver of the Roughwood Seed Collection (and also a founding EFN Board Member) was invited to give a presentation in Mullica Hill, NJ, organized by local Quakers. According to his telling, the organizers couldn't afford to pay him a fair rate, so he asked them to tell attendees in advance to bring their heirloom seeds with them. One attendee turned out to be a Nanticoke elder named Fanny Johnson who had made the trip across the river from Delaware. She brought with her a handful of maycock seeds and told Dr. Weaver that she had little trust that anyone among her people would keep them up after she was gone, so she hoped very much that he would keep them alive.
After growing them out a few times, and with a diligent researcher's knowledge of historical accounts of indigenous agriculture in the region, Dr. Weaver came to believe that the diversity present in the maycock population now in his hands represented a composite of many different historical varieties. Ms. Johnson, and likely her forebears, simply called them all maycocks, and by the time she was growing them they were essentially one diverse variety. But Dr. Weaver worked off and on through the years attempting to select different strains — "tall white," "blocky yellow," "striped," etc. — and ultimately succeed in developing quite a few different populations, none of them entirely uniform, but certainly distinct from each other. When we were given some by Dr. Weaver to grow out, with the intention of maintaining his selections, the germination was low and a change in circumstances that summer kept us from being able to conduct hand-pollinations, we all of the selections ended up crossing back with each other.
Around the same time, thanks to our work with the Nanticoke winter squash, we began getting to know Nanticoke people in New Jersey and Delaware with an interest in reviving their people's agricultural heritage. One of these was Courtney Street, the founder of Native Roots Farm Foundation, a Wilmington-based non-profit organization dedicated to preserving Nanticoke-owned agricultural land and restoring long-lost foodways to today's Nanticoke and related Lenape communities. Through our discussions, we came to the conclusion that we should continue growing as many of Dr. Weaver's selections together in order to restore the population as best we can to what Fanny Johnson originally gave him all those decades ago. Now also working in collaboration with our friends and colleagues at The Princeton Seed Farm, and also the gardeners at Courtney's high school alma mater St. Andrews School in Middletown, Delaware, we are getting closer ever year. This population, available now, is skewed heavily toward the yellow and white-fruited types. You'll probably find some light green striping, and you'll definitely find a wide range of sizes and shapes, but we don't yet feel confident that we have a balanced population that resembles what Dr. Weaver first grew out from Fanny Johnson's seeds in the 1980s. We're getting closer though. This population has fruit that are much smaller, on average, than the 'Tall White Selection' we also offer.
We will offer the same 25% of the sales of these Nanticoke maycocks to Native Roots Farm Foundation in support of their important work.
Rematriating seeds and working with Indigenous communities was not part of our plan when we started EFN, but it has become some of the most meaningful and important work we do. As we've learned more and more about the deep spiritual resonance of seeds (especially among people who consider them to literally be relatives), we couldn't work with seeds without participating in rematration processes as well. It does feel like a responsibility, but it's also an honor and a privilege to be in a position to help get these seeds back home.
