The Bobbie Hammond Story
View playlist of videos from the Prairie Talk by Bobbie Hammond.
Note: the playlist above includes these individual videos:
Introductions – The Bobbie Hammond Story
“I had to wait until I was 6 years old”
“You have a steer running down the turnpike”
Bobbie Hammond has managed as many as 25,000 acres of Flint Hills grass and 8,000 head of cattle. At the same time, she was a professional rodeo barrel racer. She won in the Old Timers’ Rodeo National Finals when she was a grandmother – and that was 40 years ago. Hammond shares her unique life story in a Pioneer Bluffs Prairie Talk.
“I always thought cowboyin’ is women’s work,” said Hammond. “It never occurred to me there was anything I couldn’t do because I was a woman. I was working with my dad from the time I was big enough to ride.”
“I know it isn’t the kind of work every woman would want to do. Probably not every man can do it,” she continues. “It’s a lot of hard work. I do everything from breaking colts to fixing water gaps to treating sick steers. It’s knowing what an old steer will do before he even thinks of it himself.”
Hammond has been featured in “Larry Hatteberg’s KANSAS PEOPLE,” and Forbes Magazine.
Today at age 83, Hammond is still working. “I don’t let a lot of grass grow under my feet,” she says. “It is a lifestyle, I think.”
Recorded October 2022 at Pioneer Bluffs
Video by Dave Leiker