Tucked away two blocks off of Main Avenue in Harmony is a huge collection on a miniature scale — or vice versa.

Slim Maroushek owns and operates Slim’s Woodshed, which is home to his personal 4,000-piece (and growing) collection of wood carvings. The collection is one of the largest private collections of wood carvings in the United States.

From tiny, ornate Chinese carvings to whimsical characters complete with moving parts, Maroushek’s museum features 58 years of collecting pieces from all over the world.

“I was born and raised across from the Bily brothers by Spillville, Iowa, and I was a little boy and I used to watch them carve,” Maroushek said. “I used to go over and I could clean the front of the clocks and never touch them, I could go to the house and get their chewing tobacco and the wellhouse to get their beer. When I’d leave in the evening, sometimes they’d give me a nickel, sometimes a dime, and sometimes a carving. That’s when I started collecting.”

He was 7, and over the years, as his work and leisure took him around the world, he’d add more to his collection. When he opened his collection to the public 13 years ago, more pieces were added. One woman from New York even donated 700 pieces.

“I like to consider this place an ideal place for children from age 5 to 105,” Maroushek said.

Maroushek himself is a woodcarver, though he didn’t start carving until 1982. Multiple sclerosis left him blind in 1979. His vision would eventually return, but only to one eye.

“I was getting my eyesight back in December of 1981. I started getting my eyesight back and my two lovely daughters bought me an Xacto set,” he said, pointing to his first carving, a relief carving of two horse heads, which is displayed among the others in his collection.

His own woodcarving would gain him prestige among carvers worldwide, and today his work can be seen in museums in Norway, the Czech Republic and others. Fluent in Czech, it also garnered him an opportunity given to few others.

“When the communists left the eastern bloc countries there was a call throughout the world to bring artists in, and I applied as a woodcarver and I got it. I was there for six weeks and I showed people how to carve at an art school,” he said.

But Slim’s Woodshed has a lot more than just his large collection. Maroushek’s company also supplies reclaimed barn lumber to building projects around the world, and supplies woodcarvers with rough-outs and specialty woods for their own projects.

“We have over 200 species of wood in here,” he said while walking through the large center room of his “shed.”

Slim’s Woodshed also has a classroom for teaching carving classes and a gift shop featuring the work of 26 artists.

Slim’s Woodshed is located at 160 First St. NW in Harmony, and online at www.slimswoodshed.com.