Plowing — breaking and turning the soil with an animal-drawn plow so the ground can drink rain, breathe, and take seed. It is preparation — it feeds the coming year, not this one — which is exactly why plowing before Shemittah became the masechta's opening problem.
Lexical anchor Jastrow s.v. חרש · The moderns Feliks, Agriculture in Eretz-Israel — the wooden ard with an iron share, drawn by oxen, shallow furrows, a few dunams a day.
Sources: Jastrow · Ephraim's shiurim, Sheviis 1:1, 10:4 · Feliks (cite-check). Status: draft.
The "white field" — open grain and vegetable land with no tree cover, named for ground that lies open to the sun. One of the Mishnah's two field types; its plowing deadline runs on soil moisture, the orchard's on benefit to the trees. Two fields, two clocks.
Lexical anchor Jastrow s.v. לבן · The moderns Feliks — dry-farmed cereal land, the majority of the country's cultivated ground.
Sources: Jastrow · Ephraim's shiur, Sheviis 2:1 · Feliks (cite-check). Status: draft.
The orchard — tree land, with a physical threshold: three trees in a beis seah yielding sixty Italian manos of fruit (about 29 kg) make the whole plot orchard, plowable as a unit for the trees' sake. Hill-country Israel is orchard country: terraces carried olives, figs, vines.
Lexical anchor Jastrow s.v. אילן · The moderns Feliks on interplowing and spacing; Safrai on the hill economy.
Sources: Jastrow · Ephraim's shiurim, Sheviis 1:2–1:4 · Feliks, Safrai (cite-check). Status: draft.
A large basket or tub — the Mishnah's big container for bulk produce and flour; by extension the communal charity fund and the Temple-treasury chests. Woven baskets of exactly this world survive from the Bar Kokhba period, preserved in the Judean Desert caves.
Lexical anchor Jastrow s.v. קופה · The realia Cave of Letters finds (Yadin excavations), Israel Museum.
Sources: Jastrow · Ephraim's shiur, Terumos 1:7 · IES Cave of Letters reports. Status: draft.
The Mishnah's workhorse dry measure — about a bucketful of grain: 6 kabin, 24 log, a dedicated vessel at harvest, storage, and sale. As land, a beis seah is the ground one seah sows — 50 by 50 amos. Its absolute size is a recorded dispute (R. Chaim Naeh ~8.3L; Chazon Ish ~14.3L), not ruled here.
Lexical anchor Jastrow s.v. סאה; Y. Terumos X ("a seah is 24 log") · The realia stone measuring vessels, Second Temple Jerusalem.
Sources: Jastrow · Ephraim's shiurim, Terumos 4:8, Sheviis 5:8 · shiurim dispute (cite-check). Status: draft.