I don’t know much about farms, but on National Milk Day Thursday I was about to get a lesson from dairy farmers David Hyde and John Hermonot.

For instance, did you know that several dairy farms in the state are now offering milk delivery to your door, hearkening back to half a century ago? Or that some dairy farmers are now pasteurizing and bottling their own products while adding new flavors such as peppermint and caramel?

That’s what I found out while visiting Hyde’s Dairy Farm in North Franklin during a celebration led by Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz and Agriculture Commissioner Bryan P. Hurlburt. National Milk Day is an annual celebration that notes the Jan. 11, 1878, date on which the first milk delivery using sterilized glass bottles started.

It turns out that farm owner David Hyde has been delivering milk door to door in a 30-mile radius for the past three years to about 200 customers in a van festooned with decorative cow prints. Throughout the state now, about 40 percent of people have access to similar farm-to-home delivery services.

“We’re a little different from the traditional milk truck,” Hyde said, pointing to his adorable vehicle that gets 23 mpg. “I always felt it would be neat to have our milk on every doorstep. That's kind of our motto. We're trying to get milk out there again.”

He delivers milk to about 30 customers a day, seven days a week, and figures he nets about 30% more profit than he can get by selling wholesale.

To spice things up, he’s also offering various flavored milks beyond the classic chocolate. Seasonally, he will offer up an apple crumb variety, or a pumpkin spice, and coffee and Oreo varieties also can be found.

He said it adds a little pizzazz to the traditional milk products, and he can sell them in smaller, pint-size containers that are convenient to take to work or school. Hyde’s Farm products are also sold at farm stands and at local stores, all listed on his website, hydesdairy.com.

“On a small farm we do everything,” Hyde said. “It’s rewarding. I’m doing it all.”

Hyde milks about 55 cows at his 60-acre farm, where he also grows corn in the summer. The cows are milked twice a day using machinery, and he is currently breeding younger cows to produce so-called A2 milk that Hyde says is more digestible for people with lactose intolerance.

Hyde has been farming since 1990, in his first few years renting land in Preston. He bought the former Johnson Farm in 2007.

Hyde said he gets about $23 for 100 pounds of milk, or a little less than $2 a gallon. Overall, according to statistics cited by Lt. Gov. Bysiewicz, the state’s 18,500 dairy cows produce about 430 million pounds of milk every year, adding $2.2 billion to the Connecticut economy.

“I’m really here not just to support the dairy industry and dairy farmers but to encourage people to support our dairy farmers here in Connecticut,,” Bysiewicz said, pointing to the 5,000 jobs created by the dairy industry statewide.. “There are a lot of ways to do that, and one thing is ... you can have milk delivered directly to your home.”

Hyde is a first-generation dairy farmer, and Bysiewicz pointed to his innovative flavors as a positive sign of the health of the industry.

“We just want to stay small and keep the quality as high as we can,” Hyde said to a small group of reporters and staff from the Agriculture Department.

Commissioner Hurlburt said he has been impressed by the resilience of Connecticut dairy farmers.

“The cost of production is high in a state like Connecticut, where we do have high land values and high other costs,” he said. “What's really interesting and what I think the future holds is is there's a lot of opportunities like this where you can be a small dairy, do processing and do direct sales and get more of that dollar per gallon than you would on the conventional or commodity level.”

He added that other dairy farms in the state are processing their own cheeses and yogurts, or turning cow manure into energy using special technology.

“It’s really hard,” added Hurlburt “Caring for animals is a 365/24 hour responsibility.”

But dairy farmer Hermonot, who has a herd of 400 cows at Farmholm Farm in Woodstock, has some extra help that Hyde with his smaller herd cannot afford. And that’s another thing I hadn’t contemplated before:

Milking can now be done by robots.

According to Hermonot, robots allow the cows to decide when it’s time to be milked.

“So the cow walks into the stall, she walks into it right from where her beds are,” he said.

The robot is able to identify each individual cow by the tag placed in her ear, and can calculate based on past performance what the expected milk yield should be. The robot’s arms are then positioned for milking, and it is able to calculate how much production is happening all through the process.

“If it’s off more than 5% it will send me a message on my phone: Unexpected low yield.”

OK, my mind is now officially blown. Computerized and robotic milking operations? I suppose it had to happen someday, and with the cost of labor today (and the difficulty in finding workers) I guess it makes sense.

But it’s a long way from the charming image of farmers milking cows the old fashioned way, even if most people’s vision of a good life is far from the reality of having to get up at 4 in the morning to clean out stalls and deal with animals that are sometimes in no mood to be messed with.

Dairy farming is becoming automated,and while that’s a bit of a loss it’s also a gain for dairy farmers in their quest to turn what used to be a dying industry into a thriving new agri- business once again.

And, along the way, perhaps they’ll get some more sleep. With robots, you see, the milking of cows at 4 o’clock in the morning can be done while the farmer is nowhere in sight.

Lee Howard is The Day’s business editor. To reach him, email l.howard@theday.com.