- A Minnesota collections program would not be complete without the story of Ruth Klausner and her cow collection in what might be the smallest town in Minnesota is the largest cow collection in the world.

Ruth, along with three other residents, make up the town of Bernado.

Driving up, I find Ruth outside her house waiting for me by her Ford Cow Tractor - Morning.

- It's great to see you again and be back at the MO Museum, Ruth, since my last visit two or three years ago, you had a lot of cows back then.

I imagine you have a few more.

- Yeah, probably a couple hundred more for sure.

- And you won an award or you were listed in the World record book?

- That was back in 2015.

I got in the Guinness World record book with 15,144.

So eight years ago.

And now we're almost 5,000 more, or over 5,000 more.

Yeah.

- So nobody's catching up to you right now?

Not - That I know of.

- Now, before we go inside, 'cause I wanna see some cows.

Yep.

Does this tractor work?

- Oh yeah.

Yep.

I take it in parades in summer.

Little tricky till she warms up.

And then I've got a new feature for parades now when I have visitors.

The tour starts here in the entryway and including my alarm clock that can get you up in the morning.

But then we'll go into the office 'cause that's where I spend a lot of my time.

And that's where I do all the cataloging and such.

- This has been kept up since I started this in the 1980s when I had maybe 150 pieces.

- Ruth, that is a full-time job.

- It does take a lot of time.

And then if I go someplace and come home with a lot of cows, then it takes even longer.

Now, - Ruth, I notice you have some old photos.

Are these pictures of you?

- That's me.

Yep.

The pictures over here are of me with my first pet cows, midnight.

And Sally, I, I love cows from the time I was just a little tyke.

And those were my first pets, especially midnight here on the left.

Actually, my cow obsession started when I was a little tyke, but I did not start collecting until I was in my thirties.

And then it happened totally by accident because I bought a statue of a cow and calf at a household auction.

And we went from there.

This is the piece that started it all.

I moved out to this house in summer of 1979 and this piece, along with the other pieces I had in the collection all fit on the ledge in the stairwell.

You know, four inches wide, eight feet long, whatever.

They all fit there in 1979.

Now they fell the entire house.

Okay.

A little bit of everything in this room.

We've got oriental cows from Japan here.

I was in Japan the year of the Ox, 1997.

Brought home a whole suitcase full of cows that I could barely drag through the airport.

The - Year of the ox.

That's - Perfect.

Yep.

A lot of pitchers and coffee pots and canister sets.

And - This is clever - Little milk carton Cow.

Yep.

I like - That.

I like this one.

- Yeah.

Squishy.

Squishy.

- That's perfect.

- Squish cow.

And these cows get rearranged almost weekly because Molly, my dog likes to jump up here to look out the window and she's not careful.

She kicks 'em off the bed.

So I have to pick things up every once in a while.

I am planning to build an addition on the house yet later this year so that I can spread things out.

And this is one area that does have to be spread out.

'cause you can't see most of the cows here that just piled in too deep.

We've gotta see the basement - You mean?

There's more.

- More.

You've only seen half the collection.

The other half is downstairs.

- You're crazy, Ruth.

- Yeah, that word has been used to apply to me quite often.

- Ruth, I noticed you call it a museum.

It's a museum of cows, right?

- Yeah.

Right.

- How did that all start?

- A friend of mine who did crafts actually came up with the name and she made the sign that's out by the road without telling me.

And she called it the MO museum.

And that caught on.

And I've used that ever since.

- Well, Ruth, what I love about your idea is your opening your collection to the public so we can all enjoy your passion.

- Yeah, it's, it's fun to do because I tell people that half the fun of the collection is the hunt of going to a garage sale, a flea market, an antique shop, and finding something I've never seen before and picking up something new.

The other half of the fun is sharing it to me.

That's, that's the fun part, is watching people go, yeah, we had one of these pieces at home, or wonder what we did with it.

Or, oh, this, this is interesting.

You know, the comments I hear from people, the, so the, the hunt and the sharing it are, are the fun parts of it.

Dusting is not part of it.