When I was in sixth grade, I spent a lot of time at my friend Janet Ihnat’s house in Western Pennsylvania—putting pennies on the train tracks and jumping off the hayloft in the barn. Well, the barn burned down some years ago and Janet has long since moved away. But, recently, I had a very good reason to go back for a visit: Worm World.

John Ihnat (Janet’s dad) started farming redworms for bait in 1993, and soon learned the wigglers were favorites among home composters as well as perch. He dubbed his burgeoning business Worm World, and set up shop in a greenhouse built on the site of the old barn. Though it was a brisk fall day when I stopped by, inside the greenhouse it was a cozy 65 degrees.

Square plots of rotted horse manure (the fresh stuff is too hot for the worms’ comfort) line each side of the long narrow room. About 80 tons of the stuff is trucked in from a local farm each year. The worms also eat their way through seven tons of produce a day, discarded from the markets in Pittsburgh’s Strip District, and when it’s available apple pomace, or pulp, from Brown’s Orchard. Cardboard covering the plots helps retain moisture.

Ihnat scoops some of the manure into a harvester to demonstrate how the worms are separated from castings—their nutrient-rich waste. As the machine spins, the castings pass through a 1/8” screen on the sides of the cylinder and the worms get tossed to the bottom, where they pass through a 1/4” screen. The castings, I’m surprised to discover, are fine and soft, and smell pleasantly like forest.

“There are cocoons in here,” says Ihnat, letting a handful of castings sift through his fingers. “Worms are bisexual, so any two worms can mate. Each forms a cocoon that holds between two and 20 babies. They look like white thread when they hatch, and after two months they’re mature enough to reproduce. That’s the great thing about redworms,” he says. “They reproduce quickly. And they don’t run away.” (Nightcrawlers, apparently, will take off willy-nilly.)

The company sells the castings, which act as a slow-release fertilizer—high in calcium, nitrogen, magnesium and phosphorus (and chemical-free). They also sell the worms. My sixth-grade self would have found the thought of paying good money for worms ridiculous. But now that I live in the middle of a city—where I have to buy bags of compost from the farmer’s market and tote them home on the F train to feed my fire-escape garden—I think it’s a marvelous thing indeed.

In fact, fed ex will be delivering a composting unit and a pound of Worm World’s finest redworms to PM’s office next week. (At which point I will tote them home on the F train.) I’m looking forward to turning my apple peels into something more productive, and my houseplants should be happy with all that fresh compost. Now here’s hoping the worms and my roommate’s cats get along.

If anyone has vermicomposting tips, I’d love to hear them! —Jennifer Bogo