A Te Anau man, who swaps the chilly Southland winters to work in the northern American summer harvesting hundreds of acres of wheat fields on a combine harvester, isn't letting a global pandemic come in between him and his favourite hobby. He’ll be jetting off to work for his summer in the United States today.

Russell Wisely first fell in love with his American summers spent ploughing the wheat fields in Loma, Montana three years ago and since then he's gone back every year. 

The days are long and hot. The workers must work quickly to harvest as much crop as they can before the colder autumn months set in. They must keep their eyes peeled for fires, which can spontaneously start from sparks emitting from the harvesters and will tear through acres of field in minutes. But it’s work he loves.

However, this year is a little different, the world has since been thrown into the chaos of COVID-19.

According to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, the United States has now had more than 2.8 million cases of coronavirus. However, Montana is one of the least affected states (after Hawaii, which has the lowest number of cases) and has only 1249 total cases and 23 COVID-19 related deaths. 

Mr Wisely said organising the paperwork and visas this year to get into America had been a "nightmare" and some of his fellow crew from Te Anau only had their paperwork confirmed yesterday.

Mr Wisely, along with Steven Drysdale, A J Beaty and Ray Keown are all heading to the same farm in Loma, Montana. Fellow Southlander, Tony Carmichael will be heading to a different farm further north in Montana, in a place called Havre.

Mr Wisely said only one member of their Kiwi crew pulled out. That was due to personal reasons and he was gutted. The rest were keen to still go and keep their commitment to the farmers who rely on the Kiwi workers to get the job done. 

"We considered not going... but it's organised a long time in advance and the [farmers] really struggle to find Americans to do it over there… a lot of Americans don't want to do that kind of work."

"They need us, they want us, and we had committed to going, so that's what we're gonna do,” he said.

Mr Wisely said he and the four other men from Southland would be taking every precaution to stay safe, social distance and travel with light PPE such as face masks. 

He said his travel insurance covers him if he does get sick and need to go to hospital from COVID-19 – but hopefully it doesn’t come to that. 

"The concerning part is the internal flights," he said.

"We'll take all the precautions we can, but you just gotta minimise the risk and get on with it. Otherwise, you'll never do anything."

But he said once they arrived at the farm in Loma, Montana, it would be so remote that they would effectively be self-isolating anyway. 

Mr Wisely will be flying into Los Angeles this afternoon with Mr Drysdale from Queenstown on an Air New Zealand flight, and will then fly on to Montana. 

The rest of the crew’s paperwork took longer to process so they are flying out next weekend. 

Despite the challenges faced with going over this year, Mr Wisely said around seven to eight other men had already shown interest to go over for the harvesting season next year.

He said the wheat farmers in America loved the Kiwi workers as they just worked hard and got the job done.