Our windshields were usually lousy, and retained ice in cruise, but never in 3000 hours did I have to land with an iced windscreen. If the temp is actually -25C on the ground it's highly unlikely that one could find enough moisture in the air to thoroughly ice the windscreen.
As for starting in feather, see above reference shutting down the engine. The engine, of course, can't help but start in feather, but transitions gently and at very low power to ground idle. Starting with the prop levers in taxi avoids a large torque transient and FOD threat when they're brought out of feather later. Also note that with the props feather there is a very real risk of "cabin heating" as Beech puts it - melting the windows with exhaust gases. Our lot had a 3 min limitation in feather.