Have you driven a car in your bare feet yet this year, or sat on the deck late into the night? If not you’d better make haste. Summer is fleeting, at least in many of the 50 states.

These rituals are signs of the season. One of my favorite seasons, I might add. Another sign of the season is this month’s issue of Dairy Foods.

July is the month when we replace our regular issue with our Buyer’s Guide & SourceBook. It’s a special product, and one that we at the magazine are very proud of. It’s a great guide to your suppliers and to our advertisers. In fact it’s one of the best reference sources for everything the dairy processor needs for running his or her business.

Looking for a company to supply you with stabilizers or sweeteners for a new dairy beverage? You’ll find a complete list here. Need a source for paperboard, or milk caps? Ditto. Maybe it’s time to replace your metal detectors, or mixers, or you’re looking to go to an energy efficient pump. Check out our listings and do some comparison shopping.

We made some changes to the Buyer’s Guide a few years ago and now we are pretty happy with the formula. We do have more participation from more vendors than ever in this installment, but otherwise, we have changed little from 2004.

Each year we select a different bright color for the cover in the hopes that it will make it easy for you to spot this great reference source in your bookcase, or your desktop organizer.

In addition to the all-important listings of suppliers and organizations, we’ve brought back two special features in this issue. Dairy Market Trends offers pages of market data and analyses on milk, ice cream, cheese and cultured dairy products. And the Buyer’s Guide and SourceBook once again features brief profiles of the purchasing groups which serve the dairy industry. And this year we’ve added Allied Purchasing, a group with deep roots in the ice cream industry and a history dating back nearly 70 years.

And last but not least, there are the listings. The set-up hasn’t changed much. Go the Index of Products to find out how to use the Supplier Guide to find a manufacturer of ice cream equipment or a supplier of cultures. The Supplier Index, is our industry “yellow pages” featuring an alphabetical listing of suppliers of goods and services.