Thanks, here is the answer from my local extension. I guess it is all over our area after 2 weeks of rain: Your tomatoes (and most tomatoes on farms) have septoria leaf spot, a fungal disease that is a little more aggressive than early blight. Most fungal and bacterial diseases start on the lower leaves and work their way up the plant. If you have the option to pull a few plants with this disease and plant some from a local greenhouse, that may protect the rest of the planting. If the spots are on too many plants to pull them all, then you can at least slow it down by removing lower leaves. Without a commercial fungicide, it may still spread.

We also are plagued by early blight. Last year, by mid-august we had basically sticks with tomatoes on them, all of the leaves were gone because of the blight. We pulled the plants in late August. Once the tomatoes were pulled, we sprayed the dirt with fungicide. We then rough turned it and sprayed it again. As soon as we planted this year we began to spray the plants, and continued spraying every 2 weeks. This year we have had no problems with blight at all! The tomatoes are the healthiest they've ever been. Now admittedly, the weather has been very hot and humid, with less rain that normal, so that is probably the real reason that we have not had any blight. Especially as compared to last year where we had a cool and damp spring followed by a wet summer. I do like to think that our preventive measures helped and I plan on doing it again this year.

I have the same issue - I am leaving the tomatoes until they get a first blush (just start turning color) and then harvest them. I let them ripen on my window-sill in the sunshine. So far, so good. Getting a much better harvest than I thought I would. I have also had to battle a prolific amount of hornworms this year as well. Not the best year for a summer garden but gotta look at the brought side and be thankful for what we get. Here is on of my window-sills:

"I think it as going on for several days. It was bad." Are you sure it was early blight? Normally, early blight has a very slow progression. While I suppose, under very wet conditions, it could spread over a plant within a week but I've never seen that happen. The average progression is closer to one leaf every several days... sometimes less, sometimes more. This year, the plant which got infected first, was also the best producer. I guess it first showed symptoms back in June. While infected, it produced AT LEAST 35, probably closer to 40, tomatoes averaging well over a lb. each. Every one of the tomatoes reached ripeness - or at least blush. That particular plant was one that eventually succumbed to the disease, but who cares, that was some plant! That pic was taken on 7-11-16. You can see how much infected foliage had to be trimmed by that time of the season in comparison with nearby plants. The plant lasted until the first days of August and was removed when it had completely died. It was a cutting taken from a volunteer that started in an indoor plant into which I had thrown, what I thought, was some bad seeds. I suppose the spores were on the plant from the beginning. I do think though, that the plant was so 'busy' with production that it had no 'strength' to fight off the blight. In any case, the plant lived for at least 2 months with the blight. I should say though, that we did have an uncommonly dry summer.