I vaguely knew that there were still milk-delivery services around, but I’d never actually seen one in action until I spotted this truck making a delivery on Webster Street this yesterday morning, and was transported back to the 1960s and my parents’ first house in Newton.milkDelivery | Newton MA News and Politics Blog

The driver, Dale, told me he has about 150 stops in Newton on his route. They deliver twice a week. Thatcher Farm, which is in Milton, no longer has its own cows; the milk comes twice a week from Hatchland Farms in New Hampshire. In the summer, if you’re not home for delivery, they advise putting a plastic bottle of frozen water in their insulated door step box or your own cooler, or if you have an extra refrigerator in your garage they’ll put the delivery in that. I don’t know if this is their normal marketing method, but he asked what kind of milk I drank, handed me a glass bottle quart, and told me to put the empty bottle in the Webster Street house box.

So I did a taste test vs. my normal Trader Joe’s skim milk, which was a few days old. I like them both; the Thatcher Farm tasted a little creamier. The glass bottles are very appealing, but more expensive: $3.10/half gallon (glass or paper) vs. $4.85/gallon in plastic. (Does milk taste different from glass bottles?) For someone who doesn’t like food shopping, though, you could eat pretty well from the rest of their product list, if you had another source for fruits and vegetables.