Let me guess what you’re thinking: “A year’s worth of food? That sounds like doomsday prepping.”

I get it. That’s what most people assume when I tell them my family has a year’s worth of food stored. And honestly? A lot of my early journey was as a prepper. Thank God for that, because when 2020 hit, we weren’t panicking. We had already done the work.

But that’s not what I’m talking about anymore.

What Food Security Actually Means

Food security is simple: it’s the space between the food you currently have and the next time you urgently need to source more.

If you had to live off the food in your possession right now, how long could you go without a grocery store run? A week? Two weeks? A month?

For our family, that answer is a year. We have a year’s worth of food in our possession, in very different forms. And I know it’s actually a year because I track it all in Provision Planner, the app I created specifically for this purpose.

This isn’t food waiting to be harvested. This is food we already have.

Why This Actually Matters

I don’t think we’re on the brink of collapse. That’s not what this is about.

But like most people, we’re noticing the world is changing. The cost of living keeps climbing. We live in a more crisis-prone environment. And as a mother, I want more control over the quality of food I serve my family every single day.

Having more control over my food source just makes sense for the goals we have as a self-sufficient family.

Here’s the reality: layoffs are far more frequent than they used to be. Grocery bills are over $1,000 a month for many families (ours included). And if you’ve ever wanted to grow more of your own food but felt overwhelmed about where to start, having food security gives you the runway to figure it out without the pressure.

How We Store a Year’s Worth of Food (Security)

We have three different systems working together:

Tier 1: Fresh Groceries
This is the typical American model. We still go to the grocery store for things like eggs, condiments, and fresh produce. These go in our fridge and freezer just like anyone else’s household.

Tier 2: The Pantry
Here’s where things look different. I don’t believe in rotating pantries because my life is too busy for checking expiration dates. That sounds horrible, and I don’t like it.

Instead, our pantry is filled with preserved food. When we or someone in our community grows cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, or anything else, we preserve it. We dehydrate it. We can it. We store it properly.

Walk into our pantry and you’ll find tons of glass jars, cloth towels, and 5-gallon buckets of staples—legumes, rice, wheat, things like that. This is food that lasts and doesn’t require constant rotation.

Tier 3: Long-Term Food Storage
This is where we really stretch food preservation. Most of this is freeze-dried food or properly packaged staples stored in mylar. It’s going to last our family about 20 years because I’m meticulous about how I package it.

I tend to do this type of preservation in bursts. I’ll sit down and do months’ worth of food at a time. Because we’re talking about 20 or 30-year shelf life, this is something I’ll do once or twice in my lifetime. It’s not a monthly commitment.

Just our long-term food storage alone covers over a year for our entire family. Add in a couple months from the pantry and our fresh groceries, and we’re well beyond a year.

What This Actually Unlocks

You might be thinking: “Isn’t this a lot of work?”

Actually, no. My system is designed to be the opposite. I don’t do rotating pantries. I don’t make long-term food storage an ongoing monthly commitment.

What I have instead is peace. And options.

Should my family ever need to provide its own food, we can last a harvest or two while we find our ground and scale up. We have reserves across multiple categories—conventional groceries, preserved pantry staples, and long-term storage.

But here’s what I really want you to hear: this isn’t just about crisis.

This is about options:

• If we face a layoff, we’re good for a year
• If we want to drastically cut our $1,000+ monthly grocery bill, we can
• If we want to scale up growing our own food, we have the runway to do it without pressure
• If we want more control over food quality for our family’s health, we can make that shift gradually

I’ve unlocked endless options for my family. Not from a place of fear, but from a place of reality and hope.

As a mother who wants her family to be its healthiest, brightest, and most cared for, I now control more of our food system end to end.

And that’s what food security really means.

If you’re interested in building this same type of food security for your family, you’ll want to join the Sovereignty Blueprint course. In this course, we assess where you are in your sovereignty journey and exactly what next steps you need to take.