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Clearing trees and brush is one of the challenges in eastern Kansas, where woods will naturally encroach upon fields and sometimes need to be removed. Today, well meet a rural-preneur who has designed better equipment to cut trees and clear fields.

Kelly Coover is the co-owner of CVR Manufacturing in Galesburg, Kansas. Coover and his brothers had been involved with a feed mill growing up in the small town.

He went to school in Erie, where he was active in agricultural education classes. In 1976, he became the state champion in the Future Farmers of America Structures and Environment competition.

Coover earned a degree in agricultural engineering from K-State and returned to southeast Kansas. For a time, he worked as an engineer for the U.S. Army ammunition plant in Parsons.

Coover always looked for a better way to do things. He joined his brother in creating a company called CVR Manufacturing to do research and development of new and improved agriculture-related products.

The company was named CVR, which is a contraction of the family name, and was also the cattle brand that Kellys father had acquired years ago.

CVR Manufacturing explored making different kinds of projects: a biodegradable injection-moldable plastic material made from wheat straw and starch.

That made it useful for making animal feed containers.

Another product was an outdoor furnace called Heatsource 1 that uses wood, corn or pellets for heating.

They then came across tree-choppers, which are a real need in forested southeast Kansas.

They licensed a product called the tree chopper, designed to be mounted on a four wheeler.

As the business expanded, Coover brought on board his son Kyle, also a K-State engineering graduate.

We saw cutting trees was a good market, Coover said.

The Sawfish line uses an appropriately named long narrow blade. The Coovers designed another tree cutting device of their own with overlapping circular disk blades.

They continued to upgrade and improve their design over time.

If the blades overlap, it only takes half the energy to cut a tree, Coover said.

Their first redesigned model included ten-inch disks to cut four-inch diameter trees, which had been created with a mount plate to go on four-wheelers.

Next, they upscaled the device to include 16-inch disks with bucket clamps that could go on the front-end loader of a tractor.

Kyle suggested another improvement on the product line: The Sawtilus trimmer, which uses a spiral-shaped blade to cut smaller trees in one revolution. This can be mounted on a string trimmer.

It keeps torque constant and minimizes hydraulics, Coover said.

CVR Manufacturing earned a patent on that product in May of 2023.

There was nothing he couldnt fix, Kyle said about his father.

It runs in the family. Kelly Coover has three sisters and three brothers: Don, a veterinarian; Brian, an ag engineer; and Dave, an ag education major who is back on the Coover family farm.

Coover continues to look for better ways to get things done.

I can see alternate uses and other ways to do things, he said. I take a notebook and when I have an idea, I write it down. I have 25 or 30 notebooks with ideas in them. I just need the time and money to get them done.

The disk tree cutter has proven especially popular for cutting trees and clearing brush.

In Texas, they are using them to cut mesquite, Coover said. Our small model is used on yucca in the west.

CVR products have gone as far away as Georgia, Oregon and West Virginia. Its an impressive record for a business located in the rural community of Galesburg, population 149 people. Now, thats rural.

For more information on the companys outdoor furnaces, go to http://www.heatsource1.com.

For information on other products, go to http://www.cvrmanufacturing.com.

Clearing trees and brush is a real need in certain parts of the country, and Kansas-based CVR Manufacturing is finding better ways to make this possible.

We salute Kelly and Kyle Coover and all those involved with CVR Manufacturing for making a difference with ingenuity and engineering.

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Kansas Profile: Family of engineers develops new strategies for the family business to succeed - The Mercury - Manhattan, Kansas