Veg patch from scratch: Harvesting winter squash

I thought the squash on the left on the tray was the largest squash I'd grown this year. I'd been checking for squashes all summer and it was the largest one I could see. But then I checked the undergrowth in the middle of the squash patch, and discovered I was wrong. A monster squash was waiting for me.
I harvested it today because I wanted to bring in all the squashes that were sitting directly on the soil after my experience last year when two of my squashes split. It's possible sitting directly on the soil wasn't the problem and that too much rain was. Either way, I wanted to preempt the loss of my squashes by harvesting some of them before they turned fully orange, particularly the very large one.

The Internet seems a little unclear on the rules for harvesting winter squash, and in fact, websites often say that it's hard to tell when the squash are ready. Here are the rules I've managed to glean:

winter squashes are ready for harvesting from September to October
make sure you retain as much of the stalk as possible on the squash (ideally at least 3-5 cm), as this helps it stay good for longer in storage. Losing the stem isn't a disaster, though, you just can't store the squash for as long
hardening of the skin of the squash is a good sign – if your fingernail easily marks the surface, it means the fruit aren’t quite ready to harvest.
the stalks drying out is a good sign
colour changes to the skin indicate squashes are ready to harvest – pumpkins turn orange. If green and grey-coloured fruit may develop an orange or pink patch where they touch the ground, this is a good sign
it's a good idea to "cure" the squashes for 10-15 days. You can do this my just leaving them outside if it's dry and sunny. Otherwise, you can do this in a greenhouse or polytunnel. However, in the past I have simply brought them into the house and kept them somewhere light and this has worked fine.

My experience is that it's fine to harvest winter squash sweet dumpling when they look like this:

They can be eaten like this as well. For extra reassurance, this one's bottom had started to go orange where it was sitting on the ground:

Eventually the whole winter squash sweet dumpling will turn orange if you don't eat it first and some of them might even turn orange while still on the plant, although none have for me yet this year. This is a picture from 2015:

Unfortunately the huge squash I harvested was so heavy that I ended up dropping it (albeit from a low height) onto the concrete. Hopefully any bruising won't ruin the whole thing, as it would be a shame to lose all that squash. I'm clearly going to have to start making squash recipes. Experience tells me that the little stripy ones (winter squash sweet dumpling) will last all winter indoors, but the long green ones, whose name I don't know, will go putrid after a while. For that reason I'm also planning to store them on plastic trays, so if they leak any putrid black liquid the tray will catch it all and it won't stain my table, like happened last year.

I highly recommend this savoury gruyere and pumpkin pie recipe from the Guardian, it's delicious.

Also, there are several delicious squash/pumpkin recipes in this blog, including:
Warming roasted squash and pepper soup