STEPHANIE MONAHAN fondly recalls having milk delivered to her front door by the local milkman when she was a young girl growing up on the outskirts of Boston. So, a few months ago, when she saw an old-fashioned milk truck chugging up the hill of her new neighborhood in Milton, Mass., she chased after it to find out if it made home deliveries.

“Sure enough, they did. I was so happy,” Mrs. Monahan said.

Now a company called Thatcher Farm delivers three half-gallons of milk in glass bottles, along with other dairy products, to her home each week. She estimates that she pays about 50 cents a bottle more for the convenience of not having to go to the supermarket.

“I’ve got a 17-year-old son at home and he drinks a lot of milk; we all do,” she said.

There was an added benefit for Mrs. Monahan. “I’m a 55-year-old boomer and it’s nice to have someone else lugging those milk bottles around. Those big containers you get from the store are very heavy,” she said. With home delivery, she takes them from an insulated milk box next to the back door.

Home milk delivery from local dairies and creameries was a mainstay for many families in the 1950s and ’60s. But as it became easier and cheaper to buy milk at the grocery store, and as processes were developed to extend milk’s shelf life, the milkman began to fade into the past.