Srinagar, Sept. 17 -- By Umer Ahmad

The first light hits the fields, and Fazi Begum walks toward her farm holding a wicker basket.

Mountains rise on every side of Gurez Valley, sealing the 2,400-meter-high region off from the rest of Kashmir for months at a stretch.

The basket holds seed potatoes, pulled minutes earlier from an underground pit her family dug last autumn.

Villagers here call these pits khew, and they have used them for generations to keep vegetables from freezing during winters that can bury homes under eight feet of snow.

Begum, 60, learned the method as a child, watching her parents stack onions at the bottom of a trench, potatoes above them, and leafy greens closest to the surface.

"There is no space for errors," ...