If the Aaron – Celia front line is a secret war in the dark, then Home Farm flares up into a public battlefield with a reckless move named Sam Dingle.

The pressure of money for many months has turned Sam from a gentle husband who only knows how to work for hire, into someone who dares to “play big” right on Kim Tate’s land.

The result: an Emmerdale legend collapses in the middle of the forest, and the Dingle family faces the risk of becoming criminals.

The story begins when Sam can’t stand the scene of Christmas near but the house is still empty.

The moment he has a heated argument with Joe Tate and announces his resignation is the first warning that everything has slipped out of control. Joe is arrogant, Lydia is desperate, and Sam feels his pride is torn to pieces. In his mind, Home Farm is both a place of wages and a symbol of all that is “rich and heartless”, causing frustration to turn into a rage of revenge.

Lydia, in an effort to save the situation, goes to Joe to ask for Sam to come back to work. But Joe and Kim Tate coldly refuse, indirectly pushing Lydia into a “gray” area: between morality and the family’s survival needs. From here, the illegal hunting plan arises. Sam plans to organize a poaching session on Home Farm land, collecting cash from rich customers who love thrills. Lydia – who is normally very upright – out of love for her husband and concern for the house agrees to keep Kim at the village fair, so Sam has time to take customers into the forest.

But Emmerdale rarely lets a criminal business go smoothly. Vanessa quickly smells the unusual: gunshots, strange figures lurking around the Tate land. She informed Kim, and Kim – true “Queen of Home Farm” – immediately rushed to the land to inspect it herself. From there, everything took a nightmarish turn. In the cold forest, gunshots rang out in the mist, and the next time the audience saw Kim, she was lying motionless on the ground, her leg badly injured, and all around her was silent as if a terrible accident had just happened.