Congratulations! Always exciting. I encourage you to wait for a couple of weeks before attempting to force pollinate. It's normal in the early stages of when a squash/melon/cucumber plant starts producing flowers for fruit to abort and for there to be a flush of male and/or female blossoms. Consider it the puberty stage for the plants. The plant needs to mature before it is ready to create fruit. Have faith that nature has genetically programmed everything to happen at the proper time. If you force it too early, you may have less overall production from the plant since the plant's goal is to create seed. If it get's to do this early it will say 'my job is done, no more need to continue producing lot's of fruit'. In the meantime, if you have squash blossoms, eat the blossoms. You decide how you prefer them. Some people get up early to harvest before sunrise so they get squash blossoms before they open for a crisp cone shape. Others like them partially open for cheese stuffings: Recipes for Stuffed Squash Blossoms

I wouldn't try growing Butternut so far north. They require more warmth than the Peops or Maximas. I can grown them down here in Western Oregon and have a fine tasty crop. But I cannot fully ripen them with a hard shell needed for long term storage. Freezing only. I would think it would be worse for your climate, but maybe you get more warmth and less clouds, I don't know. I would recommend growing Delicatas. They're a Pepo and ripen in a quite timely manner up north. I have found that they do store quite well too, just not quite as long as a well-finished Maxima.

Congrats! My first female opened today on my big max pumpkin plant. I am super excited because I also had a male open and I saw bees in my female and even snapped a pic to commemorate haha!

I read of another possibility a couple of days ago and tried to add a post but was having some kind of computer problem and could not--and now I cannot remember where I found the info! But it suggested that the plant may exhibit the symptoms we are seeing when there are temperature extremes, and here in central OH we have been experiencing hot days (mid 80s or more) followed by unseasonably cool nighttime temps (drops of 25-30 degrees)--wonderful for sleeping but horribly conducive to powdery mildew and perhaps also the squash plant's inability to set fruit. And then we had a terrific wind/rain storm (not enough rain, sadly) Tuesday and one of my nice, full-size-but-still-immature butternuts broke off the vine and fell to the ground even though I had had it supported in a sling because of its size/weight. I need to add a separate post in the forums or someplace to see if there is a way to prepare "green" squash to make it edible. I just hate to see it go into the compost bin!