But there are limits to all of this: during the coldest and longest winters, the North starves and people die.
If the ports stay ice-free and open, food supplies can be brought in from the south and from the Free Cities (for those merchantmen willing to brave the Narrow Sea in winter). Some castles are built near or over hot springs or volcanic vents, employing greenhouses to grow food even in the heart of winter. Food is stockpiled, salted, stored, even frozen where it is possible to do so. But the North lives in the constant shadow and fear of winter. During long summers, some of the North can be quite pleasant and there is widespread farming. The North is cooler than the rest of Westeros but it is certainly not covered in snow and ice year-around. There are very few highways apart from the Kingsroad and a few other notable arteries linking major holdfasts, which slows travel to a crawl. In the south there may be a few miles between towns and villages, but in the North there may be dozens of miles between points of habitation, and large stretches of forbidding, harsh countryside with no people at all.
The North is indeed vast, making up over a third of the total size of the Seven Kingdoms, stretching for over a thousand miles from the Neck to the Wall and almost as far from coast to coast.
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