The mixture of manure, cardboard shavings, and food scraps is dark—and that’s just how the worms like it. Although they don’t have eyes, red wigglers are sensitive to light and are happy to spend their days eating compost scraps in the peaceful gloom. Stuart Lilley is just as happy to show them off.

He lifts up Walmart-branded cardboard squares that shield the worms.

“They love bananas, it’s just unbelievable,” Lilley says. He runs his fingers through the mulch, revealing the thin bodies of dozens of worms. The worms don’t like the light. “We put the cardboard overtop just to give them an environment where they can just do what they do without being distracted.”

Here, on a combination farm and distribution plant in Langley, the worms eat old produce so Lilley can sell their poop as fertilizer. But it’s a little more complicated than that. So to better understand why there are thousands of worms being bred in Langley, you need to get to know Lilley, and his relationship with bugs.