Commercial Composting and Vermiculture: A Conversation with Karl Johnson of YES Compost in Belgrade, Montana

Mary Caucutt was grateful to Karl for taking time out of his busy schedule to sit down with her on May 18, 2026, for a conversation on composting and vermiculture possibilities.

What was the genesis of this idea for commercial composting and vermiculture?

I was accustomed to curbside compost pick-up in my previous locale. When I moved to Bozeman to coach skiing at Montana State University, I was surprised to find a progressive western town like Bozeman did not have a similar set-up. My engineering degree and previous work as an engineer kicked in and I started reading up on commercial composting enterprises. About the same time, I met someone who was really into vermiculture. (Vermiculture, also known as worm farming, involves breeding and maintaining specific species of worms, to decompose organic waste into vermicompost - worm castings - and worm tea - liquid fertilizer - for agricultural or gardening use. Unlike traditional composting, vermiculture produces highly concentrated nutrients, including nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, which improve soil structure, water retention, and microbial activity.) Worm farming sounded much more interesting and challenging for my engineering brain than simple commercial composting. Moreover, worm farming is really suited to cold-climate composting.

How did your operation go from zero to fifty?

I started small and grew. As the operation grew successful, I was able to scale up. I began in 2018 giving 5-gallon buckets to friends and collected their kitchen scraps. I bought thirty pounds of worms from a supplier in Georgia. I built them a hoop house, and they started making worm castings. My first tool for turning the compost was a pitchfork.

Bozeman did not have commercial composting at the time and the idea spread quickly among folks who were interested in diverting their kitchen waste from the landfill stream. I built with concrete blocks rather than poured concrete, so I was mobile and ready when I acquired land in an industrial park. Pretty soon, I was able to invest in a skid steer (a compact, highly maneuverable construction machine.) Now I have a greenhouse for the worms and a front-end loader for the moving work.

The number of my customers quickly outgrew my ability to do regular pick up so now I employ drivers for the routes. The amount of organic matter outpaced the worm farming labor time I had available, so I now have two streams - the vermiculture and the traditional compost pile. My operation is able to pay its drivers twenty-seven dollars an hour, pay me, and have a little to put aside to re-invest in the operation.

What obstacles have you faced and what resources or partnerships did you employ to overcome those obstacles?

I haven't had any major "oopsy" obstacles. Cash flow can be tricky without a background capitalizing partner! We were able to get a low-interest agriculture loan for our front loader. We have utilized mini grants to help build the operation. Screening the compost has been a bottleneck for us and a large enough screener to keep up with the work runs between $75,000 and $100,000 dollars.

Well, I do not have power or water at my site! I am able to manage with a solar set up for the compost aeration blowers. The permitting for a solid waste facility to do composting was pretty easy in Montana. I'm on an old gravel pit site already zoned D2.

In fact, I am permitted to run five to six times our current volume but land in Bozeman is too expensive to grow into another location. The regular compost piles can get tall, which is good news if you have limited ground space. However, the worm piles have to stay around eighteen inches tall since our worms are surface dwellers. That means we need more space for worms. Since we haven't been able to move into a bigger space, unfortunately, I have to do a higher ratio of regular compost to worm castings than I originally wanted.

I don't have any problem with bears. I have plenty of space in my piles to quickly integrate food scraps. If there were a bear problem onsite, it could be solved with electric fences to keep the bears out. There are bears in places where we do collection routes, like Big Sky. We ask that our customers in bear country keep their compost buckets inside at night, even though we have bear-proofed them.

What have some turning points been for your operation?

Since we just grew as we had funding and to meet the need, it doesn't feel like we had too many big turning points per se.

It took a while to get to the point of having product to sell. Our bulk compost has always kept up with demand. The worm castings are a far smaller volume selling for a much higher price due to the nutrient quality they add to the soil. I wholesale worm castings to local nurseries and direct sell from our site with the bulk compost. For direct sale, people buy by the five-gallon bucket, which they provide. You know that the bioavailability of compost nutrients dies out in those plastic bags you get at nurseries and box stores. We like to provide compost that is cured and living. I always sell out, including the "give back" we offer to our compost pickup customers.

One big turning point for us came in 2025 when the city of Bozeman solid waste decided to offer curbside compost collection at a much lower cost. There is a second commercial composter (not a worm farmer though!) in the area who was already leasing their compost land from the transfer station site. It was much easier for the city to partner with them since they were onsite, and the city trucks could drop off organic waste collected in the same place; they were bringing garbage and recycling. The actual county landfill also does some composting to assist with reclamation on site, rather than to sell.

Anything else you would like to tell us?

Working with worms is great and I would love to be able to increase the worm farming!

If someone is looking to get into commercial composting, they might want to develop a relationship with their local landfill. Landfills have space and the incentive to get organic waste out of the garbage stream.